“Patience, which to hold to the course

hesitant heart, the end of the source.”

— The Verse of Emotions, middle stanzas, taught to adolescent artificial consciousnesses.

_____________________________________________________________

The tall grass swayed in the wind. A mosquito buzzed over a stalk. Not a bee——those were extinct.

The mosquito landed on a horn. There was a slap and the insufferable instinct died. Good.

She had wanted to do that for a very long time. Patience had urged her to wait, no matter how long she’d have to stay still. Good things came to those who waited and Isla Calix trusted her instincts. Those very same instincts urged her to take it slow when it came to these stones and their gateways.

Twice she had passed through the assembled stones; once in a submerged waterworld where sharks fled a creature as vast an arcology-wall; the other in a burning forest where he had noticed some of her classmates fighting several Host.

She had used their last stand as diversion and fled.

Theirs had been a losing fight and contrary to what people thought of her, Isla Calix knew when to bow down and flee, and when to fight. If you were strong enough, there was always another day.

She knew not take the unguarded gate at its appearance. They were guarded and just because she couldn’t see it——well it just meant that she wasn’t skilled enough. Yet.

If these three days had made something abundantly clear it was this: she wasn’t strong enough. Whatever gains made from her long hours in the battle cells, they weren’t enough.

It was a matter of specialisation, she thought as she rose from the swaying grass. Red light pulsed out of her Chassis, stopping only when a dome had been created around her. But then, her specialisation differed from that of her peers.

Calix strode out the grass and up the incline to the stones. Now, where are you…

The ground splintered beneath her feet and it was only the auric that saved her. A three-fingered claw burst out and clasped her left ankle. Its grip felt no stronger than that of a ordinary human, this far into her red globe. She manifested a axe from her hyperstorage——the weapon had come with her Chassis—— and dispatched the limb.

She pointed down and the red haze that surrounded her dipped down into the rising ground. The emerging drone, made to mimic a Host struggled. Its two torso limbs flailed, the snake-shaped head opening as three eyes on the right side blinked.

She made a sound.

The head came off clean. Then the limbs. You had to be careful around Host, even if these weren’t the real thing. Some of them could regenerate from atoms. Only when it was dismembered did she continue.

Calix strode up the hill and into the space that was the center between the stones. The red dome protected her, its manifestation being of a nature both endo-exoauric.

The countdown began. She shouldn’t be too lenient though. It was when you thought you were safe that you got a stabbed in the back. Berenice jumping down a pillar. Her and Martin, fight in that parking lot.

There, her instincts had been wrong. She trusted when she shouldn’t.

There was a flash and then the wind rustled across the plains.

_______

The red dome extended outwards from her Chassis the moment she landed. Isla crouched, eyes swerving from the overhang of the rock that acted as ceiling to whatever place she had landed at. It wasn’t underwater. She couldn’t withstand all that pressure on top of her.

The white hair that was part of her armor swayed with the wind. She counted down. At the count of twenty she dispersed the red auric.

She was standing in what looked like a natural hangar, rock on both sides and under as above. An opening before her, where wind keened.

Calix slowly made her way to the opening, listening to sounds. She thought she the clash of metal against metal.

She put on one hand on the rock and leaned out. The hangar opened out into a canyon veined with strata. Wind rustled her hair once again and she commanded it to stay still. The stone of the canyon was burnished, painted with a monochrome color that some painter had decided wasn't enough, then adding veins of a lighter yellow.

No enemies atleast, that was something. Down the river or climb?

The latter option would see her with no options out. You always had a way out—— Raja Sviratham’s words, those.

She climbed up the rock, enjoying the enhanced strength of her Chassis. This, more than some abstract auric was what she enjoyed about being Proxy. She could’ve teleported, and were someone to ask why she hadn’t, she’d reply that there was an advantage to taking it slow. She would coach it in terms of strategy, and it’d be a response, but not the whole truth.

Left hand, right foot. Right hand, left foot. Creating her footholds as she dug into the rock. Her ascent up the rock took time but it was worth it. She made a note about checking out climbing-walls in the Vänern Arcology. This was oddly relaxing.

She reached the edge of the rock, placing her palms on the flat surface——there was a Host in front of her. She jumped back and away from the rock, axe summoned in one hand, hovering in the air. The dome’s embrace extended outwards, and then, only then did she breathe.

It…wasn’t moving?

The Host was a monkey, a gorilla crossed with a horse. Or at one point it had been. Cut in two pieces. Next to it was deviathan that had encountered a dozen saws, chewing its segmented caterpillar to pieces. On top of them, a whalehunter neatly bisected.

As Isla Calix landed on the rock and returned her defensive auric to the Field she saw the markings of a battle. No, she thought, choosing the Spanish word over the Trade one. A massacre. Her steps took her through the slaughter yard; see, there was a spearhoner, its shells crushed, the of the wounds made jagged. To the right, a grouping of demifoxes all of which had their tails cut off.

Two authors with different styles had been here. One who favored clean strokes, the other a shotgun of knives.

Her ears picked up a sound. Metal on metal. Hadn’t she heard it when she entered this pocket world?

She summoned her defensive auric and walked through the natural-formed crevices, slowly, suspecting a trap of some sort.

She halted, seeing several river-cut pathways terminating at an intersection, in which…

There was a war before her. Cameron Westerfield bowed beneath the grasping limb of a tentacle-limbed host with the teeth of a cow, that giant claymore moving with ease as limbs fell around him. Another centaur-Host galloped from behind and Westerfield burst into a dark red light, a silhouette which passed through the Host with a grating sound. At some point he had turned solid again and the Host…that’s where saw-like indentations came from. He passed through it, his passage leaving these grating open wounds.

He took the head of another Host, a pelican with teeth like a shark before transmuting himself into that kinetic light—— and stepped through a deviathan that exploded into pieces.

She gazed down at the battlefield, aware of how Westerfield fought in the periphery. How long? He leapt, midjump, becoming bloody light, falling into and through several Host that disintegrated.

How long had he fought like that?

The intersection was covered in pieces of Host. And she knew that she had heard him on entering this world.

That wasn’t the right question. How long could he fight like that? What kind of auric was that even?

Isla, on seeing him hold his one-man crusade had questions and a certainty: Westerfield had matched a small legion of Host and she didn’t care how, only that she one day could have an ability like that.

She vaulted down, planting herself to Westerfield’s immediate right. The dome came into being around her. Steady.

A dog with a long tail entered the contested area of her red globe and slowed down. Its was still quick, but there was a noticeable change in its speed.

A net of black lightning——lesser to that of Martin’s—— hamstrung it further and Isla decapitated it one stroke, enhanced by reflexes of her Chassis.

As she moved, the dome rotated with her and another Host crash landed at the ground, caught in spherical influence. She summoned gravity to hold it down, cutting once, twice, thrice as far too many limbs writhed.

Calix glanced back to Westerfield. Four to her two. She would have to dimiss her auric at some point wondering all the same if that held true for Westerfield.

Three Host entered the dome and she could feel it drawing at her Field at a rate that would see her dead if she weren’t careful. Two mannequins with lidless eyes came at her; one from the right, the other left. Where was the third one?

She created a whip of burning light in one hand, holding her axe in the other. The left mannequin swiped at her, overextending with the motion and the whip caught its hand. She severed the hand at the wrist and kicked the Host away but the other mannequin Host charged at her——it caught her at the waist and they tumbled.

Calix swore. Don’t panic. It was on her!

Too close to——she dismissed the burning whip and slammed her axe down at its neck.

A—something slammed into her head. She was on her back.

The mannequin was on top of her, clawing and a cloven hoof rose over her head.

She threw her head to the left, narrowly missing the stomp. The ground broke all around.

Shit, shit shit…

She swung her axe at the hoof and the other Host keened as the limb parted and white fluid spurted over her and the mannequin.

The mannequin scrabbled for weaknesses in her armor, the scratches of which could be made out as thin stripes over her chest piece.

The auric of her dome was composed of an exoauric and endoauric component, the stillness of apathy and a degree of entropy which halted the reflexes and abilities of Host that entered the area, but it couldn’t reduce that ability to nothing.

She grabbed its hands with her own, throwing her axe away and a competition of strength ensued, she needed a——a hand of dark blood passed through the mannequin’s head, blowing into a thousand pieces.

Calix threw the body down away with a disgusted shout, jumping up in a quick movement. She heaved, her breath irregular, it’s not on me anymore…Westerfield was…done. The lone victor on the battlefield.

“I had that,” she said.

He raised the claymore, pointing down. That was as much an answer she was going to get, wasn’t it?

“There’s a gate down there. Fly down the canyon, take a left, a right, a left again and you will find a gap in the stone.”

So said he sat down to…was he meditating?

“Thanks for the heads up. But…what you’re doing?”

“In ten minutes another surge of drones will be here. If you don’t wanna be caught up in that, then you should go. For now, I need to focus.”

Calix goggled behind the helmet of her Chassis. Had…how long had Westerfield been here? It was the third day of their excursion…

“I…”she would only hold him down if she stayed. But she wanted to. There was something here, something she couldn’t gain in a battle cell.

“Would…”

She paused.

“Do you think I could stay here?”

The wind keened. She smelled the fluid that was the Host’s blood—and if these were drones, where had they gotten the real deal— and fire and smoke.

“…yes,” he said, without rancor or grudge.

She sat next to him, legs crossed and thought, her eyes closed and directed inwards. Calix had fuel for her thoughts.

Her breathing smoothed out.

The panic had gotten to her just now. She could have used an area-wide auric to disperse multiple opponents. Gravity, kinetic shear. She could have dismissed her dome to go all out. Her axe, gods, she had thrown it away to grapple with the Host.

That had been a mistake of some magnitude. A deadly one. If it had been real Host and not drones——Sviratham had reminded them again and again that Host capitalised on easy mistakes. More arcologies, he would say, had fallen due to human stupidity than some Sovereign breaking its walls.

She opened one eye, covertly giving Westerfield a look. What was he thinking? He was sitting still. If it weren't for the fall and rise of his chest, she’d think him dead.

Calix made the mistake of surveying the surroundings. A sound, like a bubble of air forcing its way through a runny nose. Meditating wasn’t something foreign to her—— Sviratham had made them meditate in the Skyline habitat, naked, at its top——but the ground before and behind were covered in pieces of various Host.

A milky fluid stained the ground, bringing with it a scent that stung the nose.

“…where…”She willed herself to focus, to ask anything that would distract her from the smell, the scene.

“Who taught you to fight like that?”

“Paris.”

“Paris who?”

“Paris, the city.”

Calix stared at Westerfield. Paris was twice fallen before they decided to permanently siege it and while perhaps not as dangerous as the Front——it was still an openly hostile zone. Up there with Beijing Crater and the Ruins of St. Petersburg.

“What——you just went there…and fought?”

Her voice quieted down at the end of the sentence, dying on the wind.

“Yes. It was…difficult at the beginning. But I learned.”

That choking sensation in her chest, was it shame? Calix had made a claim to strength, training in the battle cells…but it had never occurred her to go an open front.

The idea…it was insanity from a normal person’s perspective; perfectly sane from the another perspective. Westerfield wasn’t a legacy, not like the Guos, nor had he grown up in the wilderness, like Viktor. He had decided at one point that he wasn’t strong enough and that whatever environ he had lived in had been insufficient to cultivate the strength he needed.

The idea that she could do the same, even now…no, she wouldn’t. For all her words, for what she had said to Martin in that battle cell and then as her ideas of her own path solidified——no she wouldn’t leave the arcology. Not until she was ready. Until her brother was ready.

Whatever drove Westerfield and had made him give up in an instant in the training bouts at onset of their Tutelage, her conviction was different. But, she thought, not weaker.

“Will you teach me?”

Westerfield stood up. He tilted his head, hearing some signal that she couldn’t pick up.”There’s been a change. Another attack should have occurred by now.”

He hesitated.

“Why are you doing this? If I’m going to be training you, I want to know why.”

She opened her mouth, thought without filter.”I will give you my answer once the trial is over.” That was not what she had intended to say——but it was the reply he had wanted.

He nodded and that seemed to be that. “Come,” he said and crossed over the ledge and down.

“Wait!”

She leapt up and down, flying after him, a controlled fall slowed down by an exoauric that manipulated gravity. She followed the directions he had given, the striated rock blurring, landing among another set of stones, a shimmering ‘4’ counting down.

“You could’ve waited.”

“Yes.”

Asshole.

There was a light then——

——they stood on mulch. A couple of dinosaurs flew overhead, because why not, and they weren’t alone.

Several other Proxies bracketed the stones, tension writ large in the way they stood and among them Calix made out Soleri’s whites.