“Before flying; crawling. Before speaking; whispering. Great things must be made from smaller components. So spoke an old painter and that is a truth as immutable then as it is today.” — Rick Smith, most known for starting the Second American Civil War.

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The light from the portal winked out. The figure dropped down on a dune. A flush energy cascaded and he funnelled into a endoauric wave outwards, turning the yellow sand into glass.

Where? Martin spun around, the strips of his Chassis unfurling like vengeful ghost, lips parched, head pounding like an old church bell.

Where? The energy seethed, tendrils leaping onto the reflective surface. He looked noting so much as a Proxy as a monster. A Host.

He gathered the energy into sphere centered on his palm, banishing the growing shadows of the day. He stood a dune, surrounded by hills of sand…and of the whalehunter and Berenice nothing could be made out.

He waited there, listening. The sound whispered softly and a some manner of a bird could be made out high in the sky.

Alone. He was alone. Without anger the artificial sun Martin had conjured died a still death and he slumped. What was he supposed to do now?

He lay there on the sand for a while. Just for a small while. He was so tired. The after-effects of whatever toxin the gene-modded animals of the pocket worlds had left him with had exhausted him and he was…alone.

Martin Soleri closed his eyes.

_______

He couldn’t move. Why couldn’t he move?! He opened his eyes to sand. Martin pushed——the enhanced strength lent to him by his Chassis barely enough to dislodge the sand. He gasped. Where was he? Why was he covered in sand? Why…

…it came back to him.

The pocket worlds. The Elder and Sviratham. His dreams as he slept, Chevalier’s taunts. Being poisoned. His and Sonnentag’s desperate fight.

He pulled out a jug of water from his hyperstorage, courtesy of Berenice, and drank, but not too deply. She had carried enough supplies for an entire cadre of Proxies, left him enough to——he estimated it to be a week’s worth of supplies. Still, it did make sense to husband whatever supplies he had. At the time Martin had considered it be a stingy effort by Berenice…but now he wished he had done the same.

She had protected him as he slept. With wards. What had he shown for all the time she had learned wards? Flight? A energy weapon?

He rose through the air, and flew up. He quickly reached a height of where there would be clouds. Should be clouds, but none were.This… This pocket world was just sand.

Rising and falling, a shadow of yellow somewhere between lemon and citrine. Overhead a blue sky without end. Really, Coastline should bottle these world up and sell them. There was probably a market for Three:ers.

He flew on, keeping an eye out for threats.

There would be some. Whatever paranoia he carried with him——it had been insufficient.

He accelerated onwards. When he got out of here, the first thing he would do was to schedule more time in the battle cells.

Berenice could have warded up a dune here. Wards for sight, sound and scans. She could have transmuted the sand into glass and created a fortress.

What could he do? Rose energy sheeted off his form; he dismissed it. He could destroy. He could——Martin summoned a sphere of rose fire and sent the ball flying.

Martin traced its arc, which terminated on bare sand

He gazed down at his shadow, which moved laterally on the ground. Flying was the discipline which most Proxies began learning at the onset, only mastering it late. Humans were not meant for flight, a maxim Sviratham often repeated. He was quite slow.

And yet…what could he do, that Berenice couldn’t?

If this experience had taught taught him anything, then it was that he needed to use everything he got.

The familiar endoauric manifested and a sheet of carmine crinkled over his form. Seen through the haze, the world looked washed out, tinted with the color of a princess. It could burn, that much Martin knew. But could it give him traction?

He changed the manifestation of the auric, the way strands of Field became reality. Push, he mused, push——a circular wave burst out of the fire surrounding his body, lightening the dull sands for hundreds of meters.

I know now how to turn myself into signal flare. He examined the auric. Everyone had different ways to interpret their Fields and the mechanics that miraculous power had over reality. For some reason, Martin thought of it as strings, manifesting out to do whatever reality-altering feat he desired.

Cameron Westerfield thought of it as melody, each Field manipulation as a tune.

Viktor had never wanted to describe his way of seeing the Field.

Ronja Somaronov had, to her embarassment, said that when she used her Field it was if she was a surgeon, and the Field her scapel. Why that embarrassed her was anyone’s guess.

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The strings needed to do achieve a different feat. The endoauric answered to his anger, his fury, but called on more of the same wasn’t the answer to his problem. He didn’t need to be stronger, he needed to be smarter.

The strings rotated in a circular movement around him, which Martin instinctively took be where the gravity-defying effect his exoauric came from.

Another set of strings, these frayed, like a antique mat hovered in a layer around the first circle. Ah. That was the fire, his endoauric.

He imagined a greater fraying, strands in the likeness of his Chassis unfurling, hundreds, no——even thousands of them disappearing into thin air!

The effect was immediate if disappointing: haze covered his body. Heat. Not the effect he was going for, but one worth would remember.

In the casts and the stories, Proxies pulled solutions out of thin air. It was much more difficult in real life Martin found.

What if he kept the strands from fraying? He rewove them as they disintegrated, bunching them up and created a dense net around himself. The fire turned into a carapace, a second set of armor. He returned the auric to its default state and the…carmine turned to fire again. Curious.

It struck him that he had thought of the fire only as an offensive mean, a way to end a battle. But if it could be used to create solids…

Interesting yet again not what he pursued.

The fire, he thought as flew across the boundless horizon, should strike the world. It should shove him against the air.

He inspected the strands. The light of the flames and the way they burned the world told him that the energy interacted with the world. He only needed to change the how.

What if the strands continued their cycle, but as they did, the…pieces of the pushed against the world?

He held a gauntleted hand before him, rerouting the auric…and a slightly denser fire rippled out, trailing heat.

Score.

_______

In the end it took him close to an hour to affect that minuscule change. How much time was left of their little survival test? Two days? Less than that?

He took a knee on the sand, clad all in white, pink energy streaming away from his body.

1…the auric changed.

2…smoke, and the ground began to shake…

3…and Martin Soleri flew away—

—into a dune.

Huh. That had not been the plan. He got up, repeating the procedure and this time he lowered the intensity and the force of the auric.

He shot away like a burning cannonball, his sight tinted, until the stripes of his Chassis that acted as visors turned the air opaque and normal again. This was…harder, yet more intuitive.

He banked left and cartwheeled in the air, the auric vanishing with his concentration. Shit, shit, shit…He saw the ground rise to intercept him and willed anger to fill him. The auric manifested around him and his descent stopped only inches over the ground, where he hovered.

Sand blew away from him on the ground, flattened by the force of his fire.

“Careful, careful….”

He shot up and away into the sky, making sure to keep a straight line. He needed to find a set of standing stones. The distraction to ramp up the speed was alluring, but he wouldn't do any good if he met up with Berenice with broken legs.

For a moment, for an hour, he simply flew. The wind streaked over his skin and he could feel a slight chill even though his Chassis. This was by far different then flying using gravity. Faster. Much more dangerous. Even so. There was a wonder in being a Proxy, in using a Chassis. Being free.

He found a set of stones on a dune that towered above its siblings. He banked the speed before landing, tumbling the last metres in a freefall. He had barely enough time to glance up before a two-digit number announced his impending spatial travel.

Soon.

When the digits fell to the range of 5, the desert shuddered.

A vast Host rose through the ground. Had it always been hiding beneath the sand? What would have happened if had spent the better part of his time in this pocket world flying, rather than walking?

Before it, figures in metal, running. His fists clenched. His classmates.

3. He didn’t owe them anything.

2. Even those who weren't hostile to him in the class, were still indifferent. Why should he reach out a hand to them? He’d still be rat, still be a fucking provincial.

1. ……

He burst into flame and flew away from the safety of the gateway.

Why am I doing this?

He didn’t know how to stop, so he slowed down, inspecting the scene: the Host was a statue the color of rust, with wings for arms and a long slender neck that became a crown of horns.

The others…they were Proxies, but he had never seemed those Chassis. It wasn’t too strange, there were a lot of people in 2095-13 he hadn’t met yet, still…

Martin shot beneath one of its wings, extending a sickle of flame that elicited a great roar from the Host. Got your attention, now, do I?

The Host turned with ponderous speed, a building moving.

Martin flew up, shooting a burst of fire at its horns and the Host lowered its head.

He pulled away, creating some distance. Whatever it was about to do, Martin wanted no part of it. His distraction was over. The other Proxies would have to hide as best as they could.

That old advice resounded in his head: never look back. Martin looked back.

Head lowered, wings crossed over its chest the Host shot——

——Martin lay on the sand.

The sky was that innocent blue that you could only find in casts and stories. He glanced to the left. His hand sought the piece, the shard of carmine——why was there…

The Host pushed away like a freight train and Martin reacted; the pink energy wove itself into a dense sphere around his body, like an old Christmas globe and the Host struck him. Darkness.

He wheeled himself up. The shards of his manifested globe had scattered all across the sands. How… how far had he gone?

His Field was so diminished as to be invisible. There were less of it than that time had he stopped Somchai Saolirin in his tracks.

The sand shook and Martin Soleri gazed up. Trudging across the horizon was the gigantic Host. It hadn’t seen him. He crouched, quickly, all the while wondering.

Not all Host could scan. It meandered through the landscape, horned crown swerving around.

How did it see? It had no eyes. Either it couldn’t scan him, or the scan didn't pick him up. But how did it navigate the world?

At some point it decided enough was enough and vanished through the sand. It fell through the ground, the barest of ripples, a pond being disturbed. The wind brought more sand, and if you hadn't seen it disappear, you might suspect this pocket world to be some manner of art creation.

Something that size had no business disappearing that easily. Its arrival should be announced with an earthquake. Its aurics, Martin decided, must have something to do with spatiality. What had triggered it? The other people in the class?

It was only then that he became aware——with the threat gone…that his right shoulder was numb. He willed his right arm to move, to rise, but nothing happened.

Don’t panic.

Sviratham had taught the class a stretching routine as a warm-up and he went through the initial movements; toes, knees, legs, shoulder and head. All fine, except his right shoulder.

Why——he shook himself and began moving towards the standing stones. Whatever was wrong with his shoulder, he’d have to find out on the move.

The headache and his parched throat made themselves known as he ventured up a dune, stopping for a moment to pull water and some synth-strips of meat. Bless Berenice’s paranoia. The wonder of his new flight eclipsed the needs of his body, but now that he was back on the ground, he felt all of the three days.

The Chassis would heal him, that much he knew, returning him to a default state. But with his Field diminished…it’d take time. He wouldn’t be able to fly either or call the on the angerfire.

The lense-stripes of his Chassis worked atleast, but that was a small comfort. He could make out the dune with the standing stones from his vantage point. Berenice told him she kept a counter of the time on the inside of her helmet, could he do something similar and measure the distance?

The Field had begun to replenish around his Chassis, a murmur of an aura around his body, but it was far from full strength. Still, what he intended was no auric, but merely a function of his Chassis. Though, those functions were powered by the Field…

He looked down on the dune and slowly moved his head up until the dune with standing stones occupied the center of his vision. Nothing. No marker, no metric, no sign.

He sighed and looked down again. A dart snaked from the dune he stood on, circulating through the labyrinth of yellow hills before ascending and terminating where he wanted to go.

On the inside of his Chassis, a number came into being.

Whatever elation Martin Soleri felt was dashed by that number. It wasn’t far, not in a straight line, but this wasn’t a straight line, was it?

The trudge down and up soon became a familiar rytm. You could get used to anything. A camp where arcology born looked down at him. An arcology where it was made clear that while he lived there, he wasn’t part of them.

As he passed over one dune, the Field now beginning the return to its usual shine he wondered: where had the other people from his class gone?

Had they used the stones and entered another pocket world? Where they hiding beneath a dune?

_______

As he reached the apex of the dune with the standing stones that question was answered.

They were waiting for him.