Blood Bath

CHAPTER 31 (11991-12001 Champions Era / 1991-2001 AD) – I

…Tetramorphous
Comprising time, space, wisdom, and power:
Standing above good and evil
It was indifferent to both
As Infinite Time
It was eternal and eternity

Aricame’s body fell to the ground; writhing, splashing around in the blood spewing from Stievo’s decapitated corpse. But neither body could really be said to belong to either Aricame or Stievo. The body in stillness was left void of its Champion’s essence. The body in chaotic motion held both oppositional Champion natures, Light and Dark. It flailed like a shark-bit seal splashing about on a crimson stage in a hopeless appeal to the sky. The body was both theater and battlefield. A stage performance and a no-man’s-land.

The battle raged within the corporeal entity that was Aricame. Pure essences: Light and Dark/Yin and Yang/Apollo and Dionysus/Eros and Thanatos/Ohrmazd and Ahriman. They were stuck somewhere else…a different dimension?…no…parallel planes?…no, not sufficient. They were everywhere. Everywhere their struggle was waged. Everywhere, with the moral certainty of a hegemon…in a world that would accept none.

The outside world became likewise schizophrenic. No longer under the death cloud that the two Champions represented in their flesh, the world’s population nonetheless was at the whims of the great powers’ internal struggle. What should have been peace became discord; rest : agitation; cooperation : sabotage. New storm clouds were gathering.

He: Would be victor. With Victor Strife Board pieces in hand…with opponent defeated…with the whole world at his will and whim, to do with as he pleased – had miscalculated. Aricame’s human nature became prideful in his final moment of victory.

He: Would be vanquished. On bended knee…with opponent triumphant…with the entirety of human history fought for in vain, his people to be abandoned – had executed the greatest gambit. Stievo’s Champion nature would never concede defeat.

Pretentious-Humble
Seldom aware is the heir
Of the cares that we share and compare
From up there, atop their stairs
They declare what is righteous and fair