“Ah, fear. What of it? I have known fear, and I have feared and by the time the sun rises we will be feared.“ — quote attributed to Oberleutenant Jan Hien of the 33th Company, the Kinghunters, 2042.

Editor’s note: this was shortly before the the Battle of the Oder. Hien wast posthumously awarded the Arc of the Arcology and the Kinghunters is an extant company today.

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He was running a fever. Oh, the Chassi would stop him from dying. Nothing short of the New Tuberculosis or cancer3 would threaten a Proxy wearing a Chassis, but all the same. Fever.

Berenice dabbed a cloth of water on his forehead. “How are you feeling?”

Martin groaned.”Damn…Elder…Sviratham…are they trying to kill us?”

It was the second day of their little excursion and while Berenice thought him a tad dramatic, he wasn’t wrong. The intent beyond the infected wildlife wasn’t too hard to parse in her eyes: not enough to kill the unwary, but enough to wound them.

It had all the hallmarks of Raja Sviratham’s designs. To give a student enough to rope to build a harness while never telling them that the rope was made from synth that would dissolve within a certain amount of time.

The purgative had done the job halfway. No feces——Berenice had cleaned enough shit in her life to never want to do that again—— but Martin’s temperature was several degrees higher than it should be. If he hadn’t been wearing a Chassis, she’d be screaming for a doctor right now.

Had he actually eaten the lizard…

“Sleep, Martin.”

“…why…?”

“Because,” Berenice Sonnentag said with the conviction of one that prepares,”I don’t think this test is over. Do you really think Sviratham would have settled with just poisoning the wildlife?”

Martin groaned a affirmative and closed his eyes. She put one hand on his forehead, stroking it, singing a lullaby. His breathing evened out as she found the rythm. She wondered…

You had no parents to sing you to sleep, did you Martin? Is that why you always look so set?

Only when she was sure that he slept did she exit the cave. She wove a ward, the imprinted exoauric buzzing against the entrance. Fire, to burn whatever enemy dared to trespass. It wouldn’t hold for long, for her skill was nothing like Serena Smiler’s everburning thresholds, but it would buy time for Martin to run——should he need to.

The thing about wards was, that while they did demand a certain effort from a Proxy’s field, it was a one-time cost. A Proxy could, and would weave multiple wards to create a defense and in time their Field would replenish.

She wove another ward, bigger, around the rock itself. The effort guttered her Field, but no matter. It would regenerate.

That one was attuned to motion. Sviratham wouldn’t ever settle for mere passive attacks like poison.

She fashioned another exoauric, enhancing her sight. She’d see anything coming from far away and her wards would alert her to anything invisible.

_______

It wasn’t paranoia if you were always in danger——and at midnight, the second day of their endurance test transitioning to the third, Berenice Sonnentag saw several portals open, depositing drones.

No Regials but lesser host.

She sighed then, did Berenice Sonnentag. Not a tired noise, but rather one that signalled to the world a certain upset. It brought to mind cleaners gazing down upon vomit, knowing that the removal would have take half a day.

She dismissed the active exoauric, settling to prepare two lesser wards immediately. Doing one would be an achievement, but two at the same time?

A feat for any Proxy undergoing their Tutelage.

Their disgruntled instructor had even praised her. See nothing. The first layer to the wards came into being.

Hear nothing. Sound began to doppler, shy away as if struck.

Raja Sviratham had praised her in front of the entire class, as if! As if she sought recognition from others from her skills. They had laughed at her red face, but it didn’t matter. Those people, the people in her class, they thought it was embarrassment on her cheeks. It was pride.

Her focus slipped as the gargantuan shape of a whalehunter came into being. Even without an auric, enhanced only by the lenses of her Chassis, she could see it clearly.

Its two flippers rose and it leapt, gliding on a wave of localised gravity, its three maws tasting the air. Cloven hoofs displaced the artificial wildlife on the strand of jungle.

Berenice thought of hiding in a closet. Hiding from her father. Hiding from herself. Be nothing.

The two wards, each in the shape of conch colored like a rainbow came into being——one around her, the other around Martin Soleri’s still shape.

She reached out with her Field and shattered the ward to the entrance and the wider one around the rock. Wouldn’t do for the drones to wonder why there was a ward around a empty rock.

The conch of many hues began to oil over and Berenice breathed easier. That discoloration was a sign of active scans. Which couldn’t penetrate her wards.

She sat still as the dark began to lighten, renewing the wards on occasion, maintaining her vigil over Soleri’s shape. He was breathing easier. Still, a part of her mind mused. It couldn’t be this easy.

_______

At noon a second series of portal spun into being like dropped coins, and from them issued forth a green cloud. That——how was she to deal with that?

The standing stones from her pocket world. She moved slowly back into the cave. He was sitting up, which was good. The smell of his stomach’s contents, splattered against a wall were less so.

There was a time to be diplomatic and there was a time to be honest. Berenice had never mastered that one.

“Can you move?”

Gaunt eyes turned to her. Some of the other girls, and some of the boys had talked to her about Soleri. At least before it came to light that he was from a provincial camp. She really didn’t understand it. He could be charming, when he wanted to. But pretty? With wide lips, and that skin he might appeal to some, but not her.

She repeated the question.

“Regials?”

“No, but there is some kind of cloud on the horizon. Looks like poison.”

He pulled the helmet of his Chassis from his Field and stood up at the news. There was something…wiry about Soleri. Strength, but nothing you could attach to his person. Some people seemed stronger simply by entering a room, like Westerfield or Calix. Others, she thought, like Soleri, revealed themselves only when the stakes were high.

He swayed on his feet, millimetre by millimetre inching up to his full height. Resolute.

“You thinking of running away?”

What? She’d never! After all she had…! The wards had been labors of love, painstakingly wrought. How dare he——ah, a joke. It was a joke.

“Are you thinking of doing a last stand that will change nothing?” Two could play at that.

He actually laughed.

“No. What’s the plan?”

He looked at her then, truly seeing her. She had no plan, not truly, but his trust demanded one. In that span she realised why they were friends. Words spilled beyond the confines of her lips.

He agreed.

_______

“Keep still!”

Her eyes were on the undergrowth they levitated over. A black squirrel chattered overhead in their direction. Could it see them? Surely not.

“I,” she said, careful to not bite her tongue,”am trying to focus!”

She renewed the ward around two of them, and not a moment too soon. The stains that her mind interpreted as scans had soiled until the conch was black as night. Were it to break…

Martin levitated the two of them over a gnarly root——the branch struck her square in the face.”Come on,” she moaned.”I’m the one doing the actual work here.”

“I was just poisoned!”

“I will poison you if you can’t steer us properly!”

Maintaining the ward surrounding the two of them was relatively easy; it was the second set of aurics that strained her concentration. The clock inside her helmet reached zero.

She manifested a wind to blow the noxious fumes that surrounded them, as she had been doing for the last half hour. The ward dealt with scans, not physical attacks as she had been forced to explain to Martin.

Really, what was he reading?

Her efforts in the battle cells had payed off.

Several drones that went around scanning and some kind of wide-area auric, the sort a High Regial or a Sovereign would use and none bothered her. Still, do not get complacent.

They floated down an incline.”What do you think the chances for the others are?”

The jungle lit up and an orange pillar devoured a banyan tree some metres away. Their flight didn’t even wobble; Sviratham had terrorised them beyond such petty frights.

“I imagine Calix is out.”

They rounded a corner, going around the cliff.

“Really?”

They came to a crossroad. Berenice pointed right. Soon there.

“You…I don’t think you can fight your way out of this. And that’s all she’s good for.”

“I think you sell her short.”

Their path went down a slope. She could see it now. Pool, bracketed by standing stones.

“I think you overestimate her. She is all bicep, that one.”

“Just because—“

“Not the time,” Berenice said, holding a fist up.

Something was wrong. It was quiet. All of the explosions had gone silent. The gene modded animals had gone silent too, so rather than a busy jungle in the middle of the night…it was just tranquil. Like a cemetery.

“What you’ve got? I see nothing?”

“I think it’s a trap.”

“This is the place you came from? With the gate?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s run on three?”

“Not teleport? I can drop the ward and have a portal ready to the stones in a heartbeat.”

“I thought we weren’t teleporting.”

It had to be the poison addling his mind.”Because,” she said with more patience than she felt,”with scans they could pick us up. That’s not a concern anymore, not if this is a trap.”

“We could have teleported here—“

“We couldn’t. Not really. I told you about the countdown that starts as the gate activates, how if you leave the center the timer will reset. Whatever is lurking around here, it is a just a pair of drones. Doing what you wanted would have lit up a beacon for every hostile within this world.”

“…yes, yes…”

“You ready?”

“I was born ready.”

He swayed on his feet like lamb. Less so now, but more than Berenice wanted. The old urge to run…was present, but it was superseded by other…convictions. Friendship.

“READY!”

The conch dissolved on the wind and she created a portal between here and there——Martin was first through, Berenice following him. Their feet were submerged in an instant but Berenice’s eyes were all for the number. A number. A flashing sign manifested.

10.

“Yes!”

A whalehunter leapt from the adjacent cliff, its flipper-wings creating eddies along the ankle-height water. The long limbs that served as throats came lose from a cavity in its chest, three stumps unpacking into maws.

“No…!”

9.

Raise a shield over the stones——no, that might interfere with the spatial effect. Besides, the sheer weight of the drone would shatter whatever barrier she could make.

8.

Gravity. It was creating a current of that to glide down. She’d match it. The maws lit up from inside.

7.

Three strands of white cloth each sought a head of the whalehunter; pulling to the left and Berenice acted; helped by a reversed direction of gravity the whalehunter tumbled into another cliffside. She cut the auric off.

6.

Dust, and rocks as big as her torso fell down.What was it doing? At the edge of the cloud of dust she could make out——wings.

“Martin! Get down!”

5.

She became transparent, falling through rocks.

The whalehunter shot like a meteor and she heard a cry through the disturbed earth. For a moment she wanted to stay there. She could hide here. Wait until the spatial was ready. A second cry.

4.

She leapt through the rock and up. Its back was to her. The three maws spewed fire on Soleri, who was shielded by a sphere of pink energy. She created two endoaurics around her sword and put her hip to it, unleashing a lunge that severed something in its right hoof.

3.

The whalehunter roared, its three heads swerving to shower her with fire. She rolled away, Chassis wet, feeling the heat on her back. Steam rose to the waist of the Host.

2.

The three heads took a breath.

“Don’t turn your back on me. I’m not done with you,” came an unsteady call.

1.

A triptych of fire became Berenice Sonnentag’s world. Her upraised shield took the brunt of the damage but she could tell it wouldn’t hold. Vapors rose around her, as if she was standing in a sauna. She wove two wards for impact on top of her shield but there was no time. The wards broke before fully manifesting. The panic, the need to bolt came back with an urgency. All that time working on her wards when she——

Then!

A rose sun bloomed. It cast their shadows on the walls of the nearby cliff: hers, Soleri’s and and the whalehunter. Seared them into the very rock.

0.

There was a flash——a burning wreckage of the drone. Water steamed, rising against a sky clouded by poisonous vapor. Rain began to fall on the three burnt reflection on the rocks. They looked as if they were weeping.