Old Chapter 5 - v1.0

-5- v2.0

'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 match are as such, self-folding geometry against rock walls and gray outlines of shadows.

The ground is sand, fine-grained glass that absorbs and clots into gemstones of blood under the Contestants. White granite and specks of imperfections in the stone make up the features and texture of the arena's blocks and platforms. The shadows of this place exist only in the geometry of all such shapes, their right angles, their corners and 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 are at the peak of their physical abilities.

Jorj is lean again. His body is that which is tightest woven to his abilities, respawned back into his prime. And so is Umza too. The man appears accurate to Jorj's memory, of 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, thought and technology together.

And this language speaks to Jorj, describing the names of the men around him, giving context to the ambience that is heard from their opponents.

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. The weapons are relatively light, emerald in flaying and capable of irradiating currents of lights. An edged muzzle and two protruding handles allow for sustained accuracy as their target moves. Jorj and Umza are armed instead in shock Lanzas and the places between all four, are coloured in respective green and blue 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 and the pain forces him to instinctive error.

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 streams of green 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, the blood rises, unsticking to chaotic drizzle from the stone. The only thing that remains is a golden glimpse, appearing only as a hint and blinking out into complete absence.

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 is clotting all around his sight.

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 close-by pickup teleporters where he can arm himself with other, functioning weapons.

In the distance, the other two move to do the same, opting to hide from the man in the vantage point.

Jorj remains in this high point, listening to the three men move around. Three weapons are picked from various points around the granite edges and covers. When a round passes half a meter to his right, he retreats and jumps down.

At ground level, Umza stands closeby. 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.

-

Back to granite, still in this absent moment, Jorj lapses in his flow of thought. Pointless the act, he remains in complete absence of thought, in silence at that point where Varhas rests in this stream. Stale wind fills him up, second-filtered and old.

And at this stream to where Varhas keeps a distance by choice, action begins anew as Umza rises out of cover first to draw their enemies out.

Varhas returns to Jorj as mere curious spectator. He now chooses to stay besides the man, barely touching the technology all around him.

-

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 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. 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 and the two Contestants that remain, watch it as they bleed away.