The match tested Betelgeuse' capacity to withstand boredom; and its close cousin, the drowse, could not but come knocking. 'Roast Beef' Norma had gone in bent on avoiding every strike thrown by Frederica 'the Dyke'.
It took nearly five exchanges before Norma threw a single punch. To her credit, it connected with Frederica's oblique, causing the latter to stumble backward and double over in pain.
The vicious kidney shot incensed Frederica. The woman was tall, probably half a head taller than Betelgeuse himself, and with a corresponding reach to boot. The longer the match dragged, the harder Frederica pushed herself, notwithstanding the fact that she was already breathing twice as heavily as Norma. Sweat was pouring from Frederica's glands, covering her forehead with a glistening sheen and soaking her cadet-suit through.
Norma's strategy was clear—outlast Frederica.
Pity, then, that on the eighth exchange Frederica caught Norma's jaw with a sweep of her forearm, chipping the latter's teeth and knocking her clean out.
"HALT! And the Dyke has it, fuckin' surprise!" signaled the end of the match; and there, as Frederica stood panting over Norma's motionless, supine body, her eyes boring holes into the Instructor's back, Betelgeuse could not miss the flash of hateful anger that possessed her straight, viraginous features.
All successive contests blurred together into one long slog, with the sole exception of the match between 'Rabid' Rolf and Dmitri 'Pyotr Pan' Petrovich. The match had commenced around the time Gombrovich, his left arm secured to a splint, returned with a sullen Guo Xun trailing behind.
Rolf was a man without method, scratching, biting and headbutting like an animal. But Rolf was more than an animal; he was sadistic, taking quite an apparent pleasure in torturing his opponent.
The only instance that Petrovich obtained the upper hand occurred during the fourth exchange. Amidst the exhausting grapple, Petrovich had just about managed to catch Rolf's ankle in an almost-lock when the latter dug his index finger into Petrovich's balls, pincered it and then twisted. Petrovich, screaming, had released his grip on Rolf when the latter caught his flailing forearm and bit off a chunk of flesh.
Instructor Zephyr had wasted no time in calling an end to the match. Betelgeuse clearly remembered Rolf's defiant stare, his clear unwillingness to relinquish his grasp on the quivering and pleading Petrovich.
But Instructor Zephyr had brought his face down close to Rolf, suppressing the latter with his heavy aura. The substance of their silent exchange was clear: in terms of violence, Zephyr would win.
The brutality was by no means confined to Rolf. One out of every two matches resulting in broken bones or dislocated shoulders.
Seeing this, Betelgeuse, could not help but wonder of the environments his peers must have been brought up in, for them to commit so readily to the Instructor's program. For one, their habits contrasted sharply with the serenity-emphasizing Edomites; it wasn't so much their familiarity with violence as much as their willingness to inflict it in the name of Zephyr's game. Even he, numbering amongst the most obstreperous of E-Zeta children, found the arrangement uncanny.
And yet, in the indignant stares, in the expressions replete with bile, in the secret whispers bubbled over from seething pits of resentment, Betelgeuse saw something brewing.
Once or twice, combatants would refuse to fight each other. The Instructor would cuss at them, his face strangely unemotional ('He really is like a sort of locust,' thought Betelgeuse), then switch one of the combatants out for another. In this way the Instructor preserved the integrity of the arena.
By the end of the twentieth match the arena floor was slick with gore. In his inimitably crude way Instructor Zephyr commanded four cadets to wipe the arena floor, threatening them with tonguing the entire length and breath of the room if even a spot of blood remained.
Though outwardly silent and attentive, Betelgeuse' mind brooded incessantly on the events of that interminable day. The fear was there, yes, the neurotic apprehension, but in truth he had never expected to have been chosen by the Ash Incunabulum. He cursed himself for not having had the foresight to prepare; now he was to bear the karmic consequences of his mockery of Elder Bennett's aphorism:
Prepare for the worst.
Who did not come to wish in their time of tribulation that they had prepared more? That they had consolidated their foundation or laid the groundwork with more enthusiasm? Hours into the life of a newly-minted pariah, he was just beginning to realize the magnitude of the challenge that lay ahead.
In such situations it was imperative to take things from the top. Make something usable with what he had been given.
> Will-to-Power.
He had had very little knowledge of Increments which lacked explanatory clauses, though he knew of their existence. Theory had it that explanatory clauses provided crucial context to the interpretation of power clauses, buttressing the development of such power clauses over subsequent Etchings and rewritings. As for how it worked in practice, that was the purview of an abstruse bit of theory he had heretofore not yet deciphered.
Furthermore, he had no knowledge at all of Increments which did not mention the subject's name.
Start from the beginning. To acquire something useful, you must fix the markers of your intention.
The first step was to parse the Increment.
There was one compound word comprising three hyphenated components.
The second step was to consider the meaning of each component separately.
Will had many meanings, not all of which he was familiar with. It could be a noun or a verb. As a verb, it was transitive (meaning it took a direct object). The verb will expressed tense, facticity, likelihood, expectation, probability, inevitability and tense, amongst others.
As a noun, it could refer to, amongst others, the faculty by which an individual took action, a fixed and specific intention, or some archaic document related to probate matters as practiced under the ancient (and obsolete) common law.
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To was a preposition. It situated the words in its proper relational context. Beyond its verb-tense modifying properties, it expressed, amongst others, a motion towards, an approach toward a specified limit. It identified relationships in time, space, location or even in the social context.
Power was another word which could be either a noun or a verb. As a verb, power was transitive. It expressed a supply of something or other (not merely energy), or a movement with great speed or force.
As a noun, the word had technical meanings used in physics (work done divided by time) and mathematics (being idiomatically related to the exponent of a number or expression (say x), which is the number of times that x is to be multiplied by itself). Beyond this, power meant the capacity or ability to do something or change something or influence the course of something, and it could also mean physical force or energy (electrical, mechanical or otherwise), amongst others.
The third step was to consider the emergent whole.
Will-to-Power was Will in relation to Power. From two fixed points and a relationship can a whole universe be made.
To fix his intentions in respect of Will and Power, Betelgeuse considered that these had to be nouns.
The easiest Will to direct was his specific intention at any one point in time. After all, faculties were immanent and generally did not admit of conscious direction.
His Power was his capacity to change the status thrust upon him by the gothic superstructure of the Democracy. As for the specific capacity, there was no better choice to work toward than endurance.
Endurance. The very word conjured an image of the crimson triangle tipped with the golden finial. The Hereford symbol, representing Edom's eternal endurance.
Finally, the fourth step was to consider the whole in the context of its history, if this was possible.
Half remembered things drifted into his mind; images of Elder Bennett beheld through bleary eyes. Increments were never random—the Will-to-Power was a concept he had been introduced to before. It was the brainchild of several of the philosophers who had lived before the age of the Old Empire. Its provenance was quasi-mystical. The concept itself was vague and bore, to Betelgeuse' mind, an expansionistic quality. It was life-preserving and system defying and negentropic.
That was all he could recall.
Still a little vague, but at least I have a plan.
I'm only working with three components, and hampered by the restrictions on an Ash Incunabulum besides. This means no crazy powers—all mutations resulting from the Etchings will be internal and mental for the most part.
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It had been six or more hours since the first match had commenced, and the adolescents were becoming restless under the glare of sourceless white light. The place was stagnant; no effervescence to the air, no movement, no life. Grumbling bellies bred angry combatants. The anger was concentrated on the person of the Instructor, but suppressed by his threat of overwhelming violence.
'Dog Balls' Betelgeuse squared-off against 'Downie' Douglas.
Betelgeuse kept his open palms up and before his face, hunching his neck but keeping his eyes on Douglas. His knees were bent and his legs splayed, right foot behind left. The standard Edom-ursi stance, drilled incessantly into the subconscious of all Edomite children from the moment they took their first step. Countless hours, countless days spent inhaling tar-black smog gifted by the coal mines; occasional wind, occasional rain cleared the air; but always they would be outside, and always they would be holding the stance of the bear.
Endurance, the Edomite wisdom went, could be learned.
Above all else the Edomite prized peace over violence, serenity over fitfulness.
Exposed to the elements, children cried, begged to be released, tried to wheedle their way out of training. Parents would weep, but the training would go on.
When children got sick or hurt, they convalesced until fully recovered. Then they returned to train, exposed to the rain again, exposed to the heat of the sun.
Only once Edomites had spent a total of fifty full days, a total of one thousand and two hundred hours, holding their stance out in the training field could they graduate to running. They would run, and then they would run some more.
Striking, blocking and grappling came last.
By this tedious effort the principle of endurance was carved into the bones of all Edomites, though to some deleterious physical effect. The years spent training under the shadow of the mines' cruel haze meant nearly all Edomites suffered from some kind of respiratory illness.
Health in return for philosophy, health in return for principle, the elders had sermonized.
'Years of training, just to be able to fight a fool?' Betelgeuse thought bitterly.
The command was given and the combatants stalked each other crabwise. Douglas' strabismus made it difficult for Betelgeuse to pinpoint the focus of his opponents' attention.
The fight was joined when Douglas let whip a kick toward Betelgeuse' jaw and the latter dodged away to the right. A follow-up strike low-feinted the fist aimed at Betelgeuse' temples. Betelgeuse dodged again, backward, then held his ground as he saw Douglas come in fast with a headbutt.
Impact, as Betelgeuse' forearms absorbed the hit and stung; he stepped into the overhead strike by Douglas, catching it mid swing and denuding it of power. But Douglas' next blow was already in motion and Betelgeuse raised his elbow straight, jamming the point of his bone into the middle of the oncoming fist, snapping the fist-curled fingers inward.
A groan from Douglas, his left hand falling to the side, fingers askew; but he kept coming, strabismic eyes juddering in their socket, right fist seeking a concussion.
Aggressive-type. Doesn't seem to be feeling pain. Good burst power but let's see how long he can keep this up.
Betelgeuse ducked and Douglas swung with his bad hand, the effort pitching him off-balance; a strike by Betelgeuse into Douglas' kidney sent him tumbling onto the floor, and Betelgeuse lunged after him, unwilling to relinquish the advantage.
A stray flail caught Betelgeuse in his temple, causing him to stumble back, cursing. His heart was pounding; he could feel phlegm build up in his lungs.
Douglas had just regained his footing when Betelgeuse stomped his boot onto his opponent's and threw an uppercut that took some teeth with it. Douglas lurched but did not fall, hammering his forehead into Betelgeuse' nose, smashing it and exploding his vision into reds and grays.
Betelgeuse fought through the haze and lunged at Douglas, taking him to the ground. Blood oodled from his gushing nose into his mouth, where he collected and then spit into his adversary's eyes, covering it in a film of ichor.
Seconds of flailing dragged on into minutes. They were still on the ground, grappling unto their exhaustion. Betelgeuse' heart felt like it would pop out of his mouth.
Bereft of the ability to strike, Douglas lurched wildly, trying to bring his knees to bear. Betelgeuse gripped as hard as he could and did not let go.
The minutes dragged on…
Betelgeuse could feel his blood coagulate on his face. Douglas was hyperventilating, his flails becoming weaker and less violent.
With a sudden burst of energy, Betelgeuse snaked around the slippery ground and flipped Douglas supine, catching his left arm and jamming the ruined fist into the floor, then twisting it around straight and simultaneously worming his own arm around Douglas' to complete the straight arm bar.
Douglas struggled heroically, but Betelgeuse' body pressed onto him, keeping him from gaining any momentum; then, Betelgeuse applied pressure, confirming the lock.
"I'm done, I'm done!" Douglas yelled.
Betelgeuse glanced up at Instructor Zephyr.
He pressed, feeling ligament and bone sunder under his strength.