“…why?

Because one day she is going to throw open the gates of the Holds, and on that day, I, with my comrades in arms, will be standing there. Ten thousand Regials we’ve slain, ten-thousand Regials to come.” — Saori Ogawa, Swordsaint in the service of Nori Suzuki, the Sage of the East.

“What have you learned?”

Metallic chairs scraped against floor of the same as Class 2095-13 shuffled, their eyes downcast, or bored, or uncomprehending.

Viktor Solzhenitsyn yawned, scratching his beard.

The Hong Twins were exchanging rapid glances, Guo’s shorn head shining in the light of ancient LED. Lisa traced one hand against her hair, hair that had begun to fuzz.

“The Host are not people,” Berenice Sonnentag volunteered. She had defeated their top contender — albeit with a technicality - and so occupied a position to which she seemed less than suited. That was Martin’s thought. People who didn’t know specific details of Westerfield’s surrender were eyeing her and Berenice fidgeted.

“Yeah, they sure ain’t,” Solzhenitsyn reiterated, pulling on a wisp of beard.

Sviratham nodded, and Martin wondered if he had held a lecture like this before. How many would it take before he could nod at inane statements without even the slightest hint of irony?

The instructor leaned back against a desk of corrugated metal, pointing at chalk board that was anything but one. A glowing sentence appeared on it.

THE HOST ARE NOT PEOPLE.

“Could someone elaborate?”

“People, Proxies, they use tactics that differ person to person. The Host have…I guess they have certain patterns,” Martin said, considering the nature of deviathans.

After Redsjö, he had gone through a phase where he studied everything about them.

Sviratham inclined his head.”As we will cover further in your Tutelage, the Host are predictable.”

“Not Regials or above,” Westerfield quietly protested.

Sviratham threw another sentence up on the blackboard.

THE HOST ARE PREDICTABLE, PEOPLE ARE NOT.

“We will cover the distinction between Regials both Low and High, but not today, Mr Westerfield.”

Westerfield made no gesture, his face still, but the intensity he always wore like cloak went down a notch. Jeez, how could he even sit that straight?

“Mr Solieri mentioned tactics. What tactics did we see during this preliminary of the Crown championship?”

“Area-wide ones,” cried a girl with thick blue hair. She was staring at Isla, who looked as if she was chewing on something. She glanced back at the blue-haired girl.

”Another type of tactic would be begging. And like Sonnentag said, the Host aren’t people.”

The mood changed in the classroom.

Half a dozen people catcalled Calix, whereas the rest condemned her.

“The last man standing,” Guo Hong proclaimed, severing the chatter with his usual bluntness.”Any decent Proxy,” Hong gaze swept the class,”knows that the investitures of the Holds might last for decades, as it did with Kaifeng in 78’ or First Paris 30’, and so the skilled Proxy use techniques that won’t strain their Fields.”

He paused.”Not that any here has that skill.”

“You still lost, so I don’t know that you’ve ground to stand on,” Viktor lazily commented.

A vein, as thick as his bicep formed on Guo’s forehead.

“Now you listen here you fucking Russian peasant-“

“What my twin meant to say is that all of those who reached the semi-finals employed tactics which conserved their Fields,” Lisa added, shooting her twin a look.

Martin saw her hand rise and Guo yelped.

“Indeed,” he mouthed, touching the back of his head.

“Endurance,” Sviratham summarised, throwing the word on the screen.

ENDURANCE.

”The Hongs have put a finger on an important point. As with the distinction of Regials, we will train and discuss deeper principles of Field mechanics in a later module, but I will encourage you to consider ways enhance your tactics while reducing Field strain.”

Martin mulled that. Would Sviratham— no he had. Somaronov’s tactics used less of a pull on a Chassis’ Field than what Somchai had used. In the…he hesitated to call it a discussion, afterwards, Sviratham had as much endorsed the tactic. It was probably up there with what Calix had done to him. Smooth, employing little Field, and utterly undoubting as whether what they were doing was right.

“…which brings me to the principle, how does the Field work?”

“It grants us superhuman abilities,” Calix suggested.

“That’s not what I asked. I’ll give you a hint; why did some of you last seconds, others hours?”

Solzhenitsyn och Lisa exchanged a look. Berenice had overheard some of their classmates saying that she and he both won, their fight stalemating. They had been crowned, together.

“Sonnentag ain’t wrong. The Field makes us more, but the way the distance works…well, teleporting five metres is easier than teleporting fifty metres,” Viktor Solzhenitsyn said, matter of fact.

“The distance between a Proxy’s imagined action, the cost in use of Field, it correlates with the objective plausibility of that very action.

Lisa Hong’s words went over his head, Viktor’s less so… they made a certain sense. How much did Saolirin Somchai and his Chassis weigh? If you converted that weight into momentum and force, propelled him like a freaking train, and on top of that…imagined a wall that would stop him dead and reconvert all of that gathered momentum?

That most basic principle of Field-mechanics, that Martin understood. The more you got away from what a human could do, what you could do, the more you’d have to pay. But that was just one principle. He had done something to Somaronov, wielding his suffering, and it hadn’t consumed his Field. In fact, the way he remembered it, it had barely drawn on the Field.

She sat behind him, three seats removed, and judging from the disgusted look a dark boy was giving her…

He had thrown something at Somaronov, something that had mimicked lighting, yet wasn’t lightning. Plausible— that was the word Lisa Hong had used. Manipulating the physical world, that Martin understood. Shaking the earth. Turning invisible. Throwing a sphere of fire.

But, and if he wasn’t wrong…he had thrown his emotions at the Russian Proxy. There was no physical component to it. Emotions weren’t real. A person couldn’t just stand up and launch a spear of black lightning, a projectile of hurt. Yet,

wasn’t that what he had done?

It was impossible and he had still done it, because he was…Martin stumbled, the path of his thoughts lost. In the midst of these premliminaries, as he participated in the Examination of Worth and the things he had seen in Vänern Arcology — he had forgotten. He wasn’t longer an average person. Normal. He was a Proxy.

“…which we call the exoauric and endoauric sphere.”

Sviratham had begun explaining the particulars of the Field, neatly dividing them in two.

EXOAURIC / ENDOAURIC.

A golden gauntlet grew distinct on his left hand. The balding teacher went up to a steel wall and slapped it, once.

”Exoauric!”

A perfect circle, the color of ginger, rotated into being.

“The physical world. ‘Exoauric’. It describes an action where we pull on the Field to affect the physical world.”

He turned on his heels, other arm tucked close to his face and jabbed the copper circle. Half of Class 2095-13 might have expected the dull sound; they still jumped.

The dent…Martin could squeeze himself in there.

“The exoaurics are relatively easy to understand in that sense that they’re of this world. Fire, motion, light, cold. All of things which you’ve experienced. Now,” the querulous instructor nodded at Lisa Hong,”Ms Hong mentioned ‘objective plausibility’.”

“Would anyone like to take a gander at what she meant, more specifically?”

“Physics have rules that…they’re not, I wouldn’t call them objective, but there are rules. Set rules. Motion can’t be gathered around a human limb like you just did, and the preservation of mass hinders a normal scientist from transmuting metal,” Berenice said.

“Objective physics,” Sviratham said, the word appearing behind him.”Yes, I wouldn’t call them objective, but as you’ve not quite said…there is a hierarchy of sorts. One all Proxies must know. The Hierarchy of Power. And, depending on how a Field is used, this stairway decides the cost.”

“So the exoaurics, the…I guess you could call them lesser exoaurics would be rather low on this hierarchy,” Berenice mumbled, eyes parsing it.

If the exoaurics are features of this world, then what did I hit Somaronov with? The endoaurics?

“Indeed, but they’re not the only attacks that use relatively little Field in the Hierarchy of Power.”

HIERARCHY OF POWER.

“Earlier, Guo Hong mentioned the investitures, two of them to be specific. In situations like that, Field-preservation is perhaps the most important tactic.

The fight that took the longest— how long did it take? Guess.”

“A minute!”

“We’re not talking about your sex-life, Viktor.”

“Hah.”

“An hour!”

“Two hours!”

“Thirty-six minutes,” Sviratham said. “Now, I want you to consider that time. Think of how long you lasted, and the longest fight in this little scuffle. At Kaifeng Hold, the investiture lasted 26 years. There are records of Proxies maintaining active Fields for days.”

Martin opened his mouth. Closed it. How was that even possible?

He supposed that it could be possible to main some of the lesser exoaurics for an hour— but a day?

“There are techniques we will discuss, some of which will greatly increase the longevity of your Fields, but the simple truth is that using attacks and abilities that occupy the lower ladder in the Hierarchy is a basic main-stay of how modern Proxies fight.”

The Class of 2095-13 digested that.

“The other one, then? Endoaurics?”

Sviratham lips quirked at Sonnentag’s apparent enthusiasm.

Martin, however, was too busy imagining a siege lasting longer than he had lived. Fighting spearhoners, deviathans and things like that Regial beneath the Mountain. For two decades. No wonder Sara, Nina Abreha and the other forerunners he had met drank.

“Endoaurics, with some rare few exceptions, are low on the Hierarchy. Despite, and because of…some of the, shall I say prejudices surrounding them, they are not favored by Proxies in parts of the West.”

“What he means is that only superstitious peasants like me use ‘em,” Viktor retorted, glancing at Guo Hong, who too was staring right back at the Russian.

Sviratham raised one thick eyebrow, the amber of his eyes not quite blazing.”I did not say that, and Guo Hong, as you seem so distracted by subsonic messages, perhaps you’d like to volunteer for this next demonstration of endoaurics.”

Sviratham paused. “I’m sure one of Guo Juan’s children can maintain their focus even in the face of mere emotion.”

Guo Hong, like clockwork, stiffened like a board. He got up, standing next to the instructor.

“I can take anything. Anything.”

The instructor nodded, earlier outburst covered under a neutral wrap. Had it all been for show, to get Guo up here?

“That is all well, but for the purpose of this demonstration, five seconds will suffice.”

Issinuing out from that golden gauntlet, a piece of midnight appeared, dark cloth, embroidered with small shining fragments.”Endoaurics. Observe, class 2095-13.”

He blew on the cloth and it flew in a straight line towards Gun Hong, who stood braced against the world.

It seeped into Hong, a colored image reversing…

And tears flowed down Guo Hong cheeks. His eyes widened, the whites showing, and his fists began to unclench.

He opened his mouth, a wounded noise spewing like diarrhea.

Guo Hong might be an arrogant asshole, but there was iron in him. Hong’s mouth slammed shut, twin tendrils of blood seeping from the edges, a beard of red.

The change was instant.

Hong startled, eyes blinking and his entire body swayed as whatever Sviratham had done to him went away.

“Guo Hong, your opinion on endoaurics?”

Martin thought of the black lightning he had called. How Ronja had screamed. The…sludge his mind had been trapped in, sent to dark place through Ronja’s illusions.

He nodded, his upper body forming a perfect angle. “I stand corrected.”

“Endoaurics,” Raja Sviratham lectured,”come from within. They are emotions made real. And for reasons that have haunted scientists since the Devastation, they remain painfully low in the Hierarchy.”

Martin stared down on his callused hand. He had thrown..grief, depression, sorrow at Ronja then?

“Ideally,” he said, mist rising from the ground,”you’d combine the two.”

The mist thickened, the white of it not too dissimilar from the color of his own Chassis. Should he summon it?

Martin extended an arm and he could make out the silhouettes of his classmates, but little else.

Flutter.

Martin glanced up, and a purple-winged butterfly hovered above him. It blurred into him— and he crashed to the floor.

A feeling like a pit, the gravitronic copter taking him away from Camp Redsjö. A day without end, bleak and remorseless.

He blinked.

Chiyo Moyomoto was a white wraith in red. Her words struck him like spears and he blanched. He would be no Proxy. They’d send him back to the camp.

He was making a noise, Martin Soleri was. Up and down, head bobbing, like fish on their bellies.

He was standing at the grave. There was one, and only one. Too many bodies, too few pieces. Besides, who’d waste precious resources for individual graves when you could put one big marker for them collectively? A few transmuted lines of gold on it, not due to any care, but rather, because it made the words easier to read. Made them stand out.

The mist funnelled down and the butterflies shimmered away, revealing Class 2095-13 in various states of anger, distress, fury and tranquility.

Raja Sviratham clapped his hands.

“So, what have you learned?”

_____

Later, his head against the pillow of his bed, Martin’s eyes rested on the ceiling.

From the museum and its lone Proxy fighting a last stand, to the café when he had been enticed, to the first stumbling steps through the Skyline Habitat and then the preliminaries.

The question resounded once more in his head. What, what had he learned in the three weeks since his arrival?

The Chassis held him, and in the palm of his hand a sphere of blue fire rose. Sorrow, made real. Endoauric.

In the other palm, true fire, the color peeled oranges. Exoauric.

Both winked out. He learned that despite his upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he was naive. That, to wield the power he now had, the power he had secretly desired…it changed people.

His brows crashed together. Or, the Chassis revealed who a person really was. He had thought Berenice Sonnentag to be calculating and clever,Isla Calix confident and brash but the Chassis had shown him a different truth. Beneath the cleverness, there was fear, beneath the confidence, an unthinking faith.

And who had he shown himself to be? Filled with conviction and stubborness. Yet, that conviction had left him battered in a parking lot, and it had faltered in the preliminaries. He was stubborn, and though he thought it a strength, it too could be a vice if he let it.

He had learned that some, or perhaps many Proxies thought little of sharpening their claws on their fellow man.

And that he didn’t agree with that notion. The Host was their enemy, not other people. That way lay not a slippery slope but an abrupt abyss.

He reaffirmed that he still wanted to matter.

But he wanted to matter in the right way; his own way.

“And so I surrender.”

Cameron Westerfield’s word. His own word, that. Surrender.

The stale air of the battle cell. Isla Calix, a queen in red. The fists that bruised him. The legs that broke bones. And amidst it all, an epiphany.

Isla Calix thought he had surrendered their fight, but what he had given up what was himself, his earlier doubts and the naivety. In that moment he knew. Knew that he would be his own Proxy, one who would matter and take the fight to the Host, but not through hurting people, not by debasing himself.

Martin closed his eyes, tucking in to sleep. He had yielded a fight, he thought to himself, but won the world.