Dur-Baqa is a planet most closely reminiscing old Earth. The glass spires and skyscrapers that curl and expand over the flat swampland that is the entire planet, they make a jagged mockery of that abandoned silver globe of ancient times.
Over massive underground complexes, slabs of bedrock and tunnels, the always wet asphalt megalopolis floor, it appears as fading in and out of its many street lights. Neon white, the random yellow replacement lightbulbs, rain and humidity, underground clouds, all move and weave, to and fro much more than the black cloaked shapes of the inhabitants of the city. If anything, there is more life under the ground and inside the skyscrapers and unlike other vast cities, on far away and stranger planets, there are no overarching bridges, balconies, hanging gardens, platforms or roads to connect the vertical architecture. All is damp, a quiet city among an endless swampland that is mud and stagnant waters, mosquitoes and submerged trees that live off both sweet or salty pools.
And as any spectacle, it is so made to stand out. Built by that same Claimant architect who though that bored tungsten through glass skyscrapers, is display on its own, the arena is located a bit elevated from the asphalt streets yet in the midst of down town bank complexes and princely personal skyscrapers, that they may overlook the spectacle whenever there was something there. Which of course was often and more than that quicker came the shifting of the various performers, from dancing troupes, to circuses of freaks, each passing their own bodily extreme as sacred ability, or even digital games of strategy, or even ancient remembrances of elegant ballerinas to the tunes of wooden, stringed orchestras.
The weight of all cultures, from so many points in human tradition, coalesces and performs here. Thus is the usual flow within the one and only arena of Dur-Baqa, wished so for one program to succeed the other, in an unbroken, rebooked-when-finished calendar of performers.
Within the arena, underdweller and skyscraping noble would rub shoulders with each other, carefully navigating the vast space, swayed by gentle curvature of corridors to their respective gates. Limited of capacity, the entire complex is more so one with the street level around it and slowly rising up to form a ring that connected to the skyscraper bases around it, without cutting off the asphalt streets.
As one stares above, it seems so that the jagged peaks of these tall spires all curve to enclose the sky in spearheads made of that very same crystal, or glass, or truly, a metal-alloy embedded with silicon wafers fused in invisible geometry.
And even so, the one thing that grasps most of ones attention to detail, is the holes in the solid shape. Made from carefully cut slabs to where tungsten cubes had broken through an out, all of the walls and flooring and ceiling is as such. Cracked, jagged holed, cut and glued, mortared and grounded together by a large selection of damaged city.
So indeed it is, that from old broken remnants, one saved them anew, in an oval that goes live with no foreseeable stop.
Noticeably fatter, Jorj had eaten a sizeable cut of his sponsors money. To nobody's surprise, he kept on indulging that little habit weighing down on a majority of Contestants.
That surprise would arrive eventually, when his teammate appears on the exact opposite spectrum. A Contestant bare of bone, skeletal, willingly starved as he himself, his sponsor and his Claimant willed it.
Next to the glass arena's program is a team deathmatch game. Two Contestants and two Claimants sit side by side for initial introductions that only the well dressed side actually requires. Jorj already knows the thin Contestant, having faced Umza in older matches. Maras shakes the female Claimant's bejewelled hand and then he leaves along with her, while the two Contestants roam around to kill the spare hour before the match.
"How's the Claimant snatch?"
"She is out the other way. Complete psycho."
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 she wants equally long sessions in bed."
"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 feel my soul's pieces missing."
One's excitement finds no place to be heard. What is often noticed, and that of course being rare exceptions, is that opposing pairs of sex, Contestant and Claimant, they form such sensual bonds with each other. After all, the distance a Claimant can close when they are inside of the fantastical plex of a Contestant during a match, it often comes to merge with sensitive, bodily functions and the preferences closely tied with any emotion. How that much more with a lustful urge and when the Contestant's side is usually a hyper representation of their sex.
"Beautiful words."
"I try not to speak like this Jorj. Its her that makes me speak like this. By the way, excellent Lanza shot at your last duel."
"It was alright."
"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. Good shot, good shot."
Jorj cracks half a smile back at that older pair of white teeth that he remembers. He likes the habit that Umza still has, for that exact reason. No matter what sponsor put whatever Claimant on him, he was still the man that repeated himself twice when seeing something he fancies.
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Over and into secret places within the crystal arena, out and through the holes, behind the broad shouldered guards and bouncers of more refined establishments, the two Claimants symbolically dine on debased courses.
Human flesh is served as a spectacle that was not meant to be eaten. Courses that they discuss among themselves, looking alike to ancient ritualised artworks of bounty. As the ancient Shoguns and their host, not-feasted on the elaborate roasted and re-feathered birds of five colors, awaiting for social queues to eat in very specific manners. A display of admiring the very excruciating and artistic talent, a mindfulness beyond basic sight, smell and even hearing of a dish's ambient bubbling heat, or soft rising steam, it all is as such on the exclusive restaurant for the highest classes of this city. And human flesh, cut in thin, leathery strips, it is to both, a sorrowful display on speckless ceramic plates. The blood spot that is actually beets juice, condenses and blotches identical to real blood. All materials have a characteristic unnatural, patterns of holes within the liquids, a molecular gastronomy that binds one dish to the other.
The man and the woman exchange words, almost inaudible.
Without music, one course gives way to another and they hold meanings for the two who work in that space of mind, so far apart from usual thought-streams. More accurately, as both will put it after winning the upcoming match, in one of those microscopic moments where they are to be interviewed by a hidden enemy. A moment to push the work of the fellow Claimant-cook, or perhaps, a Claimant-artist, they would say that in this moment they went beyond what their body craves, in mindless flesh and unceasing mind, beyond definition while resisting inescapable scents and tastes that beguile them into ugly taboos and breaking what beauty rests on top of a ceramic plate.
Less connected to that pocket within the two, from afar, one might look into the small dark, solitary place and believe it, a blend between art gallery and restaurant.
And after the non-dinner is finished, they both go to their respective places as the next program is about to begin.