-7-
To say that the mind is sacred, that is correct. To say that it is sacred, because whatever happens inside of it must remain hidden, that is a mistake.
Some form or other way, most Claimant schools, or independent recluse masters had a way to teach this lesson. Some simply, preached that the stream that the mind goes, it has a specific way of being understood and if that can be put to words then it is simply a right of existence that gives it importance. If we can write the disjointed happening of thought, then that gives it right to be studied, illuminated. Others say, that we are creatures of habit. Timed actions and stimuli rule us. If one rules the culture, one sows context and reaps predefined thoughts.
Many colors, many textures of thoughts occur in Claimants. So it has been for a good millennia and Varhas is often trying to use none of the techniques or habit patterns that might eventually beguile and control Jorj.
Instead of worrying of what words should come next, he imagines the story that envelops the contestant. He sees a moment in the present, unravelling right now.
Half a bottle of liquor. Some foot pushes and it rolls with a closed cap. The golden liquid sways, the gap between the wooden planks makes the movement uneven.
-
It had been a week since the news came out. Six days since twenty five of the thirty three Pantokrators voted to disband the current Immaterial Contest ladder. An emergency season was announced. The Greens were dropped by the Inverse Dream Ecumenocorps and the entire ranking was reset.
All of the six ex-champions entered the contest again and their initial performance appeared defiant, extremely refined, contrasting the general mood that would have them all humiliated.
Anax, a close friend of Varhas and also his Claimant-classmate, who had a knack for contextualizing events, he wrote as such on the matter. A private string of words, multi-encrypted and delivered with utmost secrecy, pondered over an hour's worth of thinking, appeared across Varhas' pupils. Almost engraved in the blackness, sharp light unseen to anyone that might spy in, it read as such.
"With the disillusionment of past glories, they return to the bottom, they are fighting to prove the system wrong in a heroic shell that makes them doubly berserk to prove their worth. Man's wrath against the gods that are already there. That is their story Varhas."
-
The long legged woman relishes the sway.
By a chance of their family's weird-dressed consulter it had been enough to get a trip offworld and out into a newer sky that was always orange, green and teal, teal and green and golden again. Without a night, three suns make a dizzying day, endless and measured through closed blinds on a wooden hut.
Out there is a slice of fruit. A heavenly scent and that texture of pure waters as far as any eye can see. Inside is a straw bed and a hollow place where the warm air can slip between the shadows.
The ferns are large. Hanging by reed rope, their pot is white and uneven. Their leaves cut over the horizontal lines of light. Creaking wood, the evening-to-dawn melody puts them both to sleep again and the woman puts her hopeless touch into the short haired man. His blackness passes within her fingertips and neither person suits another, but in their unique and unfortunate circumstances.
-
As Varhas did not speak of transfusions and mosquitoes while on the surface of Dur-Baqa, so he does not speak of sharks on Tropicana.
A Pantokrator, is a something now, perhaps once a someone and definitely not anything other than a Claimant, who has reached a peak. Far above, a hill built on golden thrones and millions of tons of machinery and wires that are well built to be beautiful monuments of nature. That is where they sit upon and the entire planet sits only a centimetre away from their eye. Everything on Tropicana floats between this Pantokrator's eardrum. Every vast sea is swirled by his open hand and every slosh of seawater defines the wooden foundations of every hut and concrete shipyard.
Worse than that, it is hinted in the waters of this place, that the bygone champions have been wronged. The waves crash more often than they used to. Where there was a place of calm, it is now a foaming, constantly breaking place where basalt meets strong tsunamis and the sandy beaches are only calm when the local Pantokrator gets his greedy sacrifices.
Varhas believes this Pantokrator voted against the reset of The Immaterial Contest and there is sourness at his emotional torrent within.
The next match here is a Kingmaker where one person fights three at the same time. This is a rare type of match. Not so common is the fact that the role of the King is played by a former champion. The one that has to fight the three, is not only enhanced by additional equipment and protection, but also by multiple weapons. In addition, as it seems to Varhas, the King is also divinely blessed by this Pantokrator. All that sourness, the bitterness of a God, it will be called forth by that man's wrath for retribution and the turmoil of rebellion. The breaking of systems it will be as such unleashed on the other three that are trying to keep a faulty system going.
So is the common belief, at least, that is the belief of those that stand by the ex-champions.
To the Claimant, these are impossible odds carefully manifesting from politics, symbols and personal grievances. Whatever way the match goes, it is to show many things. To display righteous acts and show who has a right to speak and who should shut it.
-
Other than straw platforms, sandy coves and log huts, there are a few concrete shipyards on this planet.
The water in these places is salty as all things, but rainbow swirls cover it in a thin layer. So it is, even when the water is rowdy and foam has a tendency to break this chemical rainbow.
A stout man with a gray, chinless beard, sits and smokes by such a concrete block that is softly beaten by the rainbow and rabid sea. The foam, wets through hair and paper, but the tobacco is still burning, giving a red glow into a face which is tucked behind the overcoat's pointy collar flaps. Leatherbound, leather behind leather, his eyes follow the liquid body that is thrashing against the fishing hook. Once out, the spotted trout flails around until it is squeezed by a swollen, stoneskinned hand. Without friction, the man is able to hold it there, while with the other hand he removes the metal hook and he puts the choking animal in a bucket full of other creatures of the sea.
The man that draws near is short. Almost made of only bone, he is held in the windy concrete deck more by his heavy steel boots and the grease-soaked wintercoat, all puffy and heavy with filth keeping him steady.
The tiny wooden chair underneath the bearded man, keeps his knees folded and high to his waist. He turns his head to see the man close in, turning from hazy figure to an entirely black texture over him.
When the thin man asks the fisherman if he eats what he catches, the other man looks at him idly and answers.
"Why? What is wrong with them?"
-
Jorj had to be pulled away from that wooden sack, but once out into the open, perpetual storm, where the clouds were slits of gray in a background of pale, he looked better than any other time.
As for his sponsor, Orichalcum mega-industries it has made an acquisition of a local fishing and underwater mining corporation. Vythos and their assets, old mines, beneath the ocean's bedrock, were absorbed into the multi-planetary collection of assets.
It was generally not known when or where matches would happen. With an overarching hostility, the windows of time that Contestants use to prepare, they too became tighter. Time and the constant, unnatural hostility of the planet, push for training to be done as far away as possible from prying eyes.
Still however, Orichalcum upper management and their Claimant consultants, were quick to fight against these odds. Such was the reason why they bought old mines, to turn them into training arenas where Jorj, Hab and Hippolus, all now belonging to the same sponsor, could train in safety. With equal secrecy, they could strategise while also avoiding any unnecessary talks, meetings, dinners or other social bonding rituals that needed to happen beforehand with Claimants and contestants of other organisations.
Here, under the choking atmosphere of old gneiss. The banded metamorphism had created patters on the walls millennials past and further still. Brown and white the rock had layers upon layers of material. Frozen waves of static, or the radio waves of some cthonic music before time, before the woes of man.
The two ladies put it as such. Zanuvia and Mallat, two aged women in their late seventies are of similar a body to their two husbands Hab and Hippolus respectively. These two plain women, of white and black, worn by the breeze, straight of hair, are Claimants, companions and coordinators to the equally old contestants. Bare bones and hunched backs, gave an allure of an ocean-witch for Zanuvia, whereas on Mallat, the same wear of flesh gave her the spirit of a weathered deckhand, equally folded by time, but often broadening when any action required her presence.
It had been so, that they had found ease, love perhaps, or the long passage of time inbetween these retired contestants. A rare event, for Claimant to marry lower than themselves. The one and only place where this happened often, was Tropicana and rarity among the rarities of high life choosing to live amongst the bottom of the barrel was in this hardship.
As for the skillset of these four old men and women, it appears on the fact that the only one that had been respawned, time and time again, was Jorj. Hab and Hippolus are as old as always and their aim has remained true. The hardship of married life had done nothing to ground these people. More than that, it appears that the shaky bonds of these two pairs, the often aggressive tone against their other half, or a complaint full of subtle bitterness, they create a deeper bond between Claimant and contestant. In that contrast, therein is superior skill that Varhas sees it so.
Jorj witnessed the aim, manoeuvring, speed within the training area as a testament to old age. He was born before the two men, but it seems that the time that they have spent in actual ageing, wisening of the gray matter and stiffening of the bones, it has done them well. He imagines older times and thinks that as man goes, he becomes weaker by each generation. Such Jorj thinks while the three Claimants and the three contestants sit around the glass table.
At every lapse of speech, when silence rushes in, there is a great void of underground nothingness. A droplet, in some other distant hallway, a wind that howls amidst the dense minerals. There is no debt here to some. To others there are no children of their own, close by, or otherwise spread out into the many islands of this planet. There are no fishes, or Sniper Rifles, or Shock Lanzas, Flak Cannons and Rockets. Just the underground silence, dampening to the very currents inbetween their ears.
Common to all, this is but a moment, where all six are one and the three Claimants, two women and a man, feel as if all is concluded here. Coordinated, felt together in utmost silence.
Varhas gets up and tells all that he will leave now. Business as usual, the two other Claimants get up to leave as well and the Contestants follow.