Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 12

Time spent alone.

Hours in his bunk. The walls bland and beige. The lighting overhead adjusted to a dull glow, a faint but constant ember. The bedding perfectly suited to his frame and weight. If he closed his eyes he could imagine himself floating.

But he liked to examine his body. It had grown from an idle hobby to a fascination. His physicality was growing more alien to him with each passing day.

Particularly his hands.

Lying in silence, the world anesthetized and distant beyond the plastic walls, he’d turn his hands back and forth. They didn’t feel real. They had sensation, he could move them, but they weren’t his hands. He kept expecting to see the hook-shaped scar over his left index finger. The calluses. The smudge of burned tissue on the base of his thumb. The tiny flecks and ancient marks of a life lived.

Gone.

His hands were smooth. His nails perfect.

They weren’t his hands, but nor did they feel like his own. They were tools. Borrowed. Capable of great destruction. His agility and dexterity were such now that he could make coins dance across his knuckles, could juggle a dozen stones if he cared to.

He also liked to lie in the dark and think of his internal organs. His heart pumping blood into his veins and arteries. His chest rising and falling at his lung’s behest, which in turn obeyed the dictates of his diaphragm. All of him soft and gelatinous on the inside, whorled and configured by complex organs.

A body.

A human body.

The body of a grown man, yet all of this, his skin, his hair, his teeth, his toe nails—it was only a few months old.

What was he?

He was interrupted in the midst of one such reverie by a message from Coach Sindre: Time to train. Head into the complex.

Charoen shelved those thoughts and rose. Dressed in a training bodysuit, and emerged into the bleak Faroe Island sunshine. Others were moving about the camp, but he ignored them. Followed the path across the stream, entered the tunnel, and emerged into the cavernous training center.

Sindre stood to one side with Silence.

That gave Charoen pause. She’d caught his eye. Made an impression. He approached warily.

“Charoen. Thanks for joining us.” Sindre’s tone was tight, his expression one of discomfort. “Following your performance in yesterday’s game, we’re changing up our approach. Catori’s taught you enough for now. What we’re going to work on instead is a series of different tactics that will help orient you on the field. Silence here has plenty of experience. I’ve asked her to help.”

Silence stood very still in her form-fitting orange bodysuit. Her skin was black where it was exposed above the hems of her neck and sleeves. Her face seemed to hover above a column of night. Slender, oblique lines of black cut straight across her cheekbones to meet over the bridge of her nose, with a truncated smaller triangle tattooed just above it up the bridge. Triangular markings emerged from her hairline like a dagger down her brow.

And her eyes.

Milky white.

She studied him in turn, expressionless.

“Sure,” said Charoen.

“Good. Silence already knows the drills. Head to the VMU. I’ll monitor.”

They walked together in silence toward the far field. Silence moved with a predatory grace that Catori lacked. She seemed to flow forward. A wisp of black hair had escaped her bun to hang alongside her face and sway in tempo with her step.

“What are we training?” asked Charoen, and a flash of dead memory came to him: Beatrice appearing in his rain-drenched VMU practice field to slay him, again and again until he had his break through.

Silence glanced sidelong at him. “Nothing special. Jäger-opfern against jäger-opfern.”

Charoen mulled this over as they pulled on their suits. “To what end?”

“I’m going to observe how you fight.” She was not afraid of direct eye contact. It was hard to meet her blank stare. “Then I’ll offer feedback.”

Charoen felt the seam close up the length of his spine. “Why did you quit being a mörderin?”

He thought she’d balk. That the cause of such a dramatic decision would be private.

She answered without hesitation. “I was bored. Mörderin’s in the Premiere play only a third of the games.”

“Why an opfern?”

“Opferns see the most action.”

“They’re the weakest pieces.”

“You’re wrong.” She ended the conversation by pulling on her helm.

Charoen considered her, feeling off-balance. Then he shrugged and pulled on his helm in turn.

The VMU field was waiting for him. The original Bavarian field, one side lined with vehicles whose headlights illuminated the grass with bright white light. Dark trees on the far side. The grass glowed an impossible green.

“Change of plans,” said Silence, now clad in opfern plate, a power halberd in one fist. She stood a good twenty yards away from him. “We’re going to start with a duel. You against me.”

Charoen hefted his lance. “You going to show me why opferns aren’t weak?”

The blade of her halberd began to glow. It rose rapidly through the gamma ranks, from dull cherry red to bright orange to blazing yellow.

But it didn’t stop there.

Her halberd continued to blaze brighter. Lemon yellow became solar bright, then a bleak and total whiteness.

Solar-ranked gamma.

130+ hz.

Charoen found it hard to understand why the sight was so intimidating. The white glare didn’t fluctuate. Didn’t waver.

Silence lowered herself slowly, smoothly, like a war machine preparing for combat, into a ready stance, the blade’s point aimed directly at his face.

He willed his turbine boots to activate and rose into the air. Dull, dark anger arose within him. She thought to intimidate him with her prowess?

Fine.

This matter would be easily settled.

He leveled his lance and unleashed a Shock and Conductive empowered blast at her.

Lightning flared forth.

Silence flung herself aside. She’d expected the attack, and was moving even as he engaged the lance. A burst to the side and she flung her halberd at him, her aim unerring.

His lighting carved up the air where she’d been even as her weapon punched into his chest. The power halberd cut through his reaver plate as if it were tissue paper. Sank deep into his chest, and a message flared into his vision:

Maximum damage accumulated.

The world blinked, and he was back on the grass. Silence straightened, her halberd appearing in her fist. Charoen coughed, checked the pain threshold: only 35%.

“Nice throw.”

She inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “Again?”

“Again,” he agreed, and his pulse quickened. Up he flew, but this time he arose swiftly, rising some thirty yards before she could hurl her weapon after him. Once at a safe remove, he began to circle, considering.

She’d expect him to hop into range as his next move. Perhaps she knew of his Blink ability, and would be waiting for the double hop.

But if he didn’t, he’d have to dive down to engage, at which point she’d hurl  her halberd—

Wait.

Where’d she go?

Silence had disappeared.

Eyes narrowed, Charoen scanned the field. She had to be down there somewhere. Invisibility? Great.

He’d asked Catori about that ploy. What was to stop hellseherins from loading up on Camouflage and Shadowed and Invisibility and just hiding the whole game from the jägers? There weren’t any perception-based powers that could nullify them.

The answer, she’d explained, came down to gamma. Jägers with higher gamma could pierce the illusions of lower ranked hellseherins.

Which meant he was fucked.

There was no way he could crack her Solar-ranked gamma.

Frustrated, he began to sweep across the field, resisting the urge to just blanket it with random sheets of lightning. No; he had to lure her out of hiding. If he could react—

A force grabbed him by the hip and jerked him down and to the side. With a shout Charoen’s flight path was compromised as he was suctioned down toward the field, only a few yards, but enough for a blazing halberd to fly up and slam into his chest.

Maximum damage accumulated.

“Damn it,” he hissed as he appeared on the grass, Silence before him once more. “That how you want to play? There’s no point. I can’t see you.”

“I know. I don’t plan to kill you the same way twice. Again?”

Charoen scowled at her, then nodded. “Again—”

Faster than he could track, she took one step forward and hurled her halberd at him. He let out a cry, instinctively tried to swing his lance to parry it, but missed.

The halberd slammed into his chest.

Maximum damage accumulated.

“Damn it!” He immediately took to the air, face flushed. The urge to protest was strong, but he’d only sound childish.

Silence watched him rise.

He could sense her amusement.

She took a step back, lined up her halberd, and hurled it at him. It flew true, blade burning bright, but he veered aside so that it missed and disappeared into the night behind him.

“Ha,” he breathed, and descended toward her, lance crackling with flame. “See, there are limitations to being an opfern. You go throwing your weapon away every time—”

She took a step back, empty hand rising as if to cup the air just behind her head.

Charoen froze, confused.

The halberd appeared in her waiting fist. She lunged forward and hurled it. He was only some ten yards away. It punched into his chest.

Maximum damage accumulated.

“You have Called,” he said bitterly as he appeared on the grass once more. “You can throw that damn thing as many times as you want.”

“How perceptive of you.” She spun the halberd about herself in a lazy flourish. “You don’t stand a chance against me. Do you know why?”

“Your experience?”

“No. Experience is as much of a trap as it is a boon.”

“Your Abilities?”

“That makes your life harder, true. Ominous and Bane combine with Brilliant Energy to make it simple to take you out with one strike.”

“Brilliant Energy?”

“It allows my weapon to ignore armor.”

“Oh damn.”

“But that’s not the real reason you’re losing.”

Charoen frowned at her. “Your gamma?”

“Again, that makes things complicated for you.” She raised her halberd, and slowly it dimmed, the white turning yellow, then orange, then cherry red. “But I can still beat you even with my gamma purposefully reduced.”

Charoen scoured the dead Charoen’s memories for an answer. “I don’t know, then. Why can you beat me so easily?”

Silence allowed her halberd to go dark. “Because I’m not afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“What are you not afraid of?”

“Of dying,” he said contemptuously, feeling at once brazen and bold, yet strangely childish, too.

“That’s not the fear I see inside you.”

That gave him pause. “What do you see?”

“You care about winning too much.”

He scoffed. “That’s a fault in a krieg chess player?”

“That’s a fault in any living being.” She approached. “It makes you hesitant. You second-guess yourself. You worry about being hurt, becoming a liability, about losing your chance at glory. Conversely, it can drive you to take absurd risks. To throw yourself at a mass of opferns and waste your opportunity in a game.”

Charoen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me you don’t want to win?”

“I don’t care about winning.” She stopped before him.

“Then what do you care about?”

He could almost make out her smile through her nearly-opaque visor. “Experiencing.”

His annoyance was sudden and sharp. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She raised her halberd and ran one gloved finger over its edge. “Krieg chess is a wonderful way to experience life. Everything gets reduced to its most essential forms. Exultation. Heart break. Hope. Pain. Despair. Everyone tries to play the game, but most simply aren’t able to wrap their minds around the right mindset. Why do you think so few players make it to Solar rank?”

“Lack of talent?”

“True. But also the wrong… way of seeing the world.” Silence lowered her halberd. “There are many approaches to excellence. The one that has made the most sense to me, however, is to understand excellence itself as honesty. If you can be honest when playing, then you can excel. Not because you desire to be the best, but because by freeing yourself from illusions, you can be nothing but.”

Charoen stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“Not yet, perhaps. But I agreed to this training because I think there’s a chance you might some day soon. You’re an Echo, aren’t you?”

He stiffened. “What of it?”

“Shh, don’t be so defensive. I couldn’t care less. But being an Echo is such a gift. You were born without attachments, without the illusions it’s taken me so long to tear down. You see the world as it is, beneath the surface, without all the meaning that everybody imposes upon it. You Echoes have the unique ability to be more honest than everyone else.”

“Honesty. You keep going on about that. What are you being honest about?”

“That there’s no meaning to any of this.” She gestured to the field. “This game. I know the stakes. The politics. The wealth. But despite what everyone says, this is all so meaningless. We struggle and fight and suffer to—what? Amuse the crowd? Make men like Virgil powerful? It’s absurd. This little sport. This vestige of combat.”

“Then why play?”

“Because it’s not just the game that’s meaningless. It’s all meaningless.” Her voice had taken on an intense thrum. “Humanity puts so much effort into imposing meaning upon this uncaring world. Religion, culture, love, family, connections, loyalties. All of it a narcotic, meant to dull the pain of accepting the truth: that we are but fragments of consciousness like sparks dancing above a fire in the dark. Fragments that will exist for but a second, and then be forever gone. Nothing has meaning beyond what we give it. All around us is silence. The world doesn’t care what we call noble or good or real. It’s cold and vast and indifferent to our little sparks. If it could feel anything, I fancy it would feel amusement at our frantic attempts to be something greater than what we are.”

Charoen stared at her, mesmerized. The old him, the original Charoen, might have laughed her off. Held up his love for Jessie as proof of meaning, his desire to outshine his father, his desire for conquest.

But he? He thought of his duplicitous hands. Of his imposter identity. What was he, but a spark in the night? Transient, immaterial, unwanted, and unloved?

“Yes,” said Silence softly. “You do see it. Through the web of lies everyone else tells each other. And don’t get me wrong, those lies serve a purpose. They comfort like a mother’s embrace, they tell us that we matter, we are important, that there is a point to all this effort and struggle and pain. But why is humanity so unhappy? Because deep down, everyone knows that assertion for what it is: a lie.”

“A lie,” said Charoen softly.

“The only truth is that in this moment, we are capable of sensation, of action, of imposing our will upon the universe. That’s why I play. It’s the most efficient and beautiful way to receive maximum stimulus. That’s why I don’t care if I win. What does ‘winning’ mean, anyway? It’s madness. No. What matters is each encounter. Each combat. Each struggle for dominance. When I can assert myself over someone else. Shine brighter than them, if only for a moment. That’s what drives me. And in accepting that, I am honest.”

“But you said I was holding back. I wanted to win too much. That sounds like you want to win, as well.”

“I don’t care about winning the game. I care about winning my own encounters. And if I lose?” She shrugged. “I let the loss go. I don’t dwell, I don’t despair. All too soon I’ll be dead. This body I’ve worked so hard to cultivate and strengthen and perfect?” She ran her hand down over her hip to her thigh. “It will rot and grow soft and stink until it’s incinerated and my ashes scattered over the waves. So no, I don’t care about winning. I’m in the moment. Just as you were in yesterday’s game. That’s what’s drawn me to you. A similar approach. You revel in combat. But you do so either furiously, without elegance, or timidly, like you were playing now.”

Charoen tried to absorb all this. Tried not to let his gaze linger where her hand had outlined her curves. “So what do you advise?”

“Relax.” She stepped forward to put her hand on his chest. “Relax, Charoen. Stop thinking. Stop hesitating. Stop being driven by desperation. Don’t be a pig at a trough, eating as if each second might be your last. For no matter how much you eat, it will never be enough. So, accepting that, eat beautifully, eat elegantly, dine as your appetite desires. Only then will you unlock your greatest potential.”

“Relax,” he said, turning the word over in his mind.

“Relax your mind even as your turn your body into a living weapon. Do you see me tense?”

“No.”

“Because I’m not. Even as I do this—” And faster than he could follow, she swung her halberd up, snapped it around, head blazing white once more, to slam it into his throat.

Maximum damage accumulated.

Charoen choked, more in shock and surprise than pain, and staggered as he appeared before her again.

“See?” He could hear the smile in her voice. “No tension. No fear. I killed you elegantly, smoothly, beautifully.”

Charoen rubbed at his neck. “A beautiful kill.”

“Because death can be so beautiful,” she whispered, drawing closer again. “Watching someone else die. That moment where they go from sentient star stuff to a husk. That threshold. To let go. To cease to be. To fade into black. What could be more alluring?”

Charoen shivered. “I don’t know about that. But… fine. I’ll try your approach. Shall we go again?”

“Let’s.”

Charoen engaged his hopper pack even as she lunged for him, halberd burning bright. Her Ominous ability caused his gamma to oscillate, but was neutralized by his Centering. He smacked the head of her halberd away with the palm of his hand as he activated his lightning lance, and then the world shrank, swirled, and fell away.

He appeared above her and activated Berserker and Speed simultaneously. She’d almost disappeared; had he not known where to look, he’d have missed the shadowed blur that was already running out wide.

Relax, he heard her say. Kill beautifully.

Charoen inhaled deeply and used Blink to hop out beyond the curvature of her run, snakes of lighting already engulfing his lance, and the world fell away again.

When he emerged, before he could even orient himself, he activated the lightning lance and flew upward, turbine boots humming powerfully with the burst of movement.

The lightning played over where Silence should have been, but nothing happened—the grass was scorched black, but there was no scream, which meant—

A halberd came flying toward him. Speed allowed him to duck back and snake out his hand to snatch it midflight. His fingers closed around the haft and its burning head immediately snuffed out.

Incoming data from League Processing Center…

Reaction upgraded: S2 → S3

Called wouldn’t work as long as he held her halberd. Knowing this, she dropped her Shadowed and Camouflaged abilities to appear below, arms out wide, knees bent, staring up at him.

Berserker was rushing through him like colorless fire. But it wasn’t burning him up. He stared down at her, dispassionate, and felt the truth of her words. A spark leaping up into the void. A flicker of consciousness.

What he wanted was to feel.

So he unleashed another bolt of lighting to her left, herding her to the right, and dove at full speed toward her, power halberd drawn back.

Silence leaped away, then hit him with a Gravitational Well. Instead of fighting the pull, he went with it, curved out wide, and aimed another blast of his lightning lance in her direction.

Conductive extended his range. Shock augmented his power.

The world flashed white as the lance spat death. A huge bolt clawed its way through the air, sprouting dozens of smaller branches as it arched and flexed and caught Silence in its web.

Her scream was visceral but not necessarily one of agony; in that moment where she was burned from the inside out, it sounded almost as if she were thrilling at the pain, the torment.

Then the world rest and he was back before her on the grass, her halberd gone from his grip, his heart pounding as he allowed himself a small smile.

“How was that?” he asked. “Beautiful enough for you?”

“Oh yes.” She gave herself a shake, as if a shiver of ecstasy had run through her, and lowered into a combat crouch. “Now I think our training can really begin.”