-18-

Cheap Meconian liquor. Normally, not a thing to fret over, but the Claimants feel that if a debt number was to appear in-front of them after the last fight, that number would be astronomical, a 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.

To that end, the team owes some respect, some self-control over spending, to the corporations that enable them. Whether it is fear or awe, the team has decided to partake in things that do not test the upper management's patience.

This decision guides to an earnest try to enjoy all things with small price-tags. Such as, a night out in the alleyways of Mecone. A revelry of cheap drinking with the slaves, over iron tables and brick bars, in dank and hidden places.

What pleases them however, is the rarity of such a spot. Few would have guessed that the oppressed of Mecone were here, living as any human would, taking delight in ancient customs of enjoying life's passage.

And such are ancient customs that grain and grape, brass cauldrons and distillation become clear, see-through liquid on tall glasses, hoisted high above commoner and Claimant heads alike.

An odd giant might pass outside the brick bar. They may crouch for a good look through the wooden windows and after cracking half a smile, continue their nightly walk. Krypteia or not, this easy going attitude had become dominating over a planet that was preparing for warlike, horrible events.

Inside, Lacata stands on top of a table. Her boots step over glass and split drink alike 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 Lacata, her long black skirt flutters 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 to other man's ear and they both grimace a painless fright of fun, one that manifests in wide smiles and hearty howling.

For that very fright, Varhas knows absent in him. All the oppression of Mecone, a trick to a god that wanted nothing but to be wrathful skies. He sits alone in the wooden bar, watching the moments flow. From the blonde brute grabbing under Lacata's skirt, to the cardgame 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 at him for an exchange of words, 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.

-

He soars amidst the moving shapes and he too, heavily drunk on a bar-stool, windswept underneath by his confused bodyweight.

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 Lacata, wise Zanuvia and a king, universes away, sitting closeby 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 as such, 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. In this case, social violence of a bunch of celebrating gods, unleashed to party around mere slaves.

He feels a certainty, that whenever one of his teamates 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 gets it but Varhas.

-

Varhas has been in this moment many times throughout his life. Self loathing reflected outwards as seeping unlight. 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 and the sharp elasticity under his back's muscle, the broad inflammation is screaming in throbbing pains for the long duration that it takes to pick up the almost empty glass of alcohol.

The liquid goes down his throat and it seems to him that even swallowing is a conspiracy of his own body to a ritual of torment.

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 an infinitesimal distance lower than that last time.

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.

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 and horrible as all seductive savagery that is disguised as innocent. 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 refined from one million-fold possibilities, but she is a human just like 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.

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 woman's left temple.

An all out brawl begins.

-

Lacata is chasing after Varhas. The two giggle and tumble around the dawn of Mecone's rolling hills. Over the unripe fields of wheat, ill-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 surrendered drunk locomotive motion where one step is never aligned to the next.

'Halt Lacata. 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 self barbarian king to bed, you've got yourself accusations of pederasty.'

'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 other weeds have grown it into a jagged 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 put order back into the human-sized brawl that occurred few moments ago.

However, further back, careful but still happy of the circumstances, the two remaining Claimants, Anax and Zanuvia, believe it to be a deliberate non-violent confrontation by the giant authorities. Perhaps the will of a Pantokrator, that had to respect the victorious team hosted on his planet. This, along with the calmness before war, the greater patience before something worse than the little discrepancies of slaves.

Those are perhaps the reasons why the brawl inside of the brick bar devolved into a contest outside of who could throw the most accurate rocks against the giant pacifying units.

Between these thoughts, Zanuvia turned to speak to Anax.

'I am actually quite proud Hab hit that stone throw.'

'Dead center on the officer's helmet hole.'

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 an IDP?'

'Me? No.'

'What about Varhas?'

Anax slurs his every word. A dry mouth speaks and the tongue flicks at almost each sentence.

'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. Especially very strong ones like Varhas.'

'How much have you drunk?'

'A lot. I may not look like it, but I always keep two feet on the ground. 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 away 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 Varhas' planet?'

'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, acting autistic 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 the talk of espionage, or perhaps the rising of the cliff. 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 peer into Varhas' Claimant prowess?'

'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 Lacata.'

'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 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 Lacata. I do no espionage work anymore because I am well aware of what invisible knives this invites in the dark, of the puddles of Bonemelter that await you right outside of your home as countermeasures.'

Both Claimants remain there, frozen in memories and rumors of these two ways of assassination. The images are horrifying, to an extent that they both break their facade of calm and they choose to walk the rest of the distance, exchanging only few words.

'Who else do you suspect?'

'There is only one left. Voliphoe. That is why she is not here with us.'

'You suspect a Claimant plays the role of a Commoner?'

'Wouldn't be a first.'

'She is a random, from the streets. I see your point, but I have not witnessed her doing anything peculiar.'

'Yet she is close enough to stick black feathers on Jorj for example. Have them fall off in crucial moments, displaying to all the textures of Varhas' magic. Didn't you notice her reaction when we met Varhas' sister? Didn't you see her reaction when his sister spoke of the cat and its spirit?

-

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. Other's begin to gleam, in the characteristic orange and ultraviolet-speckled glow of Orichalcum. Clusters remain there, rotating along the movement of the planet.

Battleships and frigates, thinly layered in the alloy, the fleet gathered above Mecone, is an ordered display of strength. To the people versed in the history of the planet, this is a display of their might. Not of their industrial or mineral capacity, or of their logistic capabilities, since Mecone had almost no raw materials or vast districts of manufactories, but of a display of slavery, a display of domination and its funneling wealth. For this planet was capable in one thing, conquest and suppression. All armaments and ships provided, by slave populations or in the rarest of cases, private organizations such as Orichalcum, well funded by misery.

Varhas and Lacata 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.

After his two hands fall idle to his side, she speaks.

'They are all leaving.'

'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. At least we won't have to care about debt anymore. That is of utmost importance! All triremes and galleys and frigates, Orichalcum covered. We have shown the universe in a little pyramid arena that the shield is mightier than the spear! 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. I'm gone.'

Otto appears in the distance. Alone, his presence invites Lacata to his side and as the young Claimant leaves, Varhas is eager to the silence. Whole of mind, falling towards the pillars ahead, the artificial constellations above, 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 fingerprints.