“There is no way, there is no way out, and I don’t, I don’t know, how

will there is no way

my gums, they

there is blood everywhere and they’re coming and the blod, the blood.”

scribbled words on paper, found in the Frantic Forties exhibition in the Lost Museum, Marseille Arcology.

Editor’s note: I consider the curators of the Lost Museum to be the pre-eminent experts on the artefacts concerning the mania of that sad decade. This slip of paper was found in one of the Alps communities, formed by those that left the arcology and shunned the provincial camps. I am grateful that such a practise has begun to die out in these modern times.

_____________________________________________________________

There was a flutter of light, the tell-tale of impending transference.

“…I still don’t believe she will be here,”Listhofer said, his voice trailing off at the sudden lightshow.

Emerging from the light were none other than Isla Calix and Cameron Westerfield; one horned, with white hair, the other a knight with chiseled armor, both clad in red. Abruptly Martin felt his shoulders drop. A burden, unknown to himself, released.

“Martin!”

Calix lifted him up in a hug that would injure a baseline human without Chassis; too bad she had forgotten about her horns, which nearly gored him.

The other Proxies——Listhofer, Maier, Muratovic and Dijkstra gathered around Westerfield, clamoring for his attentions. Of course, now that the number one in their class had showed up—why would they listen to him?

He tried to temper his expectations. Dijkstra and Maier weren't too bad, they were on board with his suggestion. As for the others…they didn’t knew Berenice, so why would they care?

She was just a stranger that they had never known. Never shared cups of coffee with, exchanging their deepest secrets as the walls grew thin.

Dijkstra’s werewolf Chassis glinted black in the light as he detached from the crowd. Lines of fur extended down an archaic black bodysuit, a thing made in remembrance of those worn during Frantic Forties, which in turn were fashion from the earlier century.

“You with us, Calix?”

It took her a moment to decipher his thick Trade. It flowed unnaturally, with weird stops at uncommon intervals. That impression wasn’t helped either by the fact that his head what that of great shaggy wolf.

She glanced at Martin.

“With us?”

Sharp claws wrought sparks as the Dutch Proxy clapped. “There is a damsel to save and evil monsters that stalk the land. We just need Saolirin and we’d have a proper monster’s ball.”

He made a snapshot with his claws, catching Soleri and Calix within the frame.”A ghost and a devil, a wolfman and with Somchai we’d have a snake. There is always a snake in the stories.”

“What damsel,” Calix asked, in the sepulchral voice of a person fed up with the dramatics,”are we saving?”

“Berenice, of course. Poor thing’s got herself lost.”

Martin willed Calix to not protest, to not tell the gathered Proxies about the Examination of Worth. Nothing, he imagined, could sway the other Proxies to Listhofer’s cause.

And speak of the weasel, the true weasel and not Berenice who just wanted to change…

“…I’m just saying, we don't owe her any help.”

That was Listhofer, and if the German Proxy cared even the slightest about his fellow national—well, he had an odd way of showing it.

“You are right.”

—so spoke Westerfield as he rose in the air, red cape falling over the back of his detailed Chassis. The garment was tagged to his shoulders by onyx clasps, and it should have made him look ridiculous. Instead, he hung in the air like some hero from an old comic.

“But she is a Proxy in the service of Man, so we will try.”

It wasn’t boast. This wasn’t like Guo Hong, who would demand the world to be in certain way and then act accordingly or Viktor Solzhenitsyn who would be his own worst enemy and spite the world as long as he was right.

Cameron Westerfield had that thing of a born politician: sincerity, or, Martin thought in a cynical way, the body language to portray such an emotion in a confident manner.

Listhofer, like so many other cronies Martin knew, shut up. That one was a follower, never a leader.

“Calix, you take left. Soleri, take right. Here,” he said, and a pale red string shaped itself into a tattoo. An eye, the same of the Sovereign the Scottish Proxy had sworn to kill.

“Put it under your ears.”

The——the lesser ward rippled across his Field and Martin could suddenly hear breathing in his ear. The sound shut off as his Field acclimatised.

Westerfield turned to the other three Proxies. None would meet his gaze.

“Call if you see either Sonnentag, a set of stones or an enemy.”

With corresponding nods from both himself and Calix, he shot away.

“Dijkstra, can you fly?”

“I can jump.”

“Follow me.”

Martin exploded up and on high, a funnel of dawn beneath his feet, a continuous pillar that sent him flying. Beneath Dijkstra leapt, gargantuan leaps that sent him flying over the tropical pines and big ferns.

Martin glanced back. Maier, Listhofer and Muratovic all looked so small as he flew away. And not just due to the distance.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Soon, the falling night— gods was it only the third day- gave way to stars on the firnamnent. How high were these make-belief stars? He imagined that he could reach out to pluck them.

The land under his feet remained constant.

No Host, though crocodiles sunning on raised sections of ground in the jungle. A thing that had be some sort beefed up snake glared from deep beneath a tidal pool of water, the dark of the water making it so that the creature’s body could only be inferred. He shivered. Martin wouldn’t be fighting a creature like that without a cadre at his back.

Which brought to mind; Dijkstra leaping over the the ground, falling down, down into the water——a portal manifesting before he landed in the water——a second portal throwing him over the horizon. Never beyond his line of sight though. That… made a certain amount of sense. Martin had been unable to teleport out of the pocket world, but within it?

Dijkstra alighted on a branch.”Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” he said, stopping some distance next to the wolfman. He cut the angerfire and used the more conventional way of staying in the air through gravity aurics.

“Not used to flying?”

“Not with the fire,” Martin admitted.”Why are we stopping?”

Dijkstra stared up at the full moon.”All Proxies have their gifts. Some Chassis come with perks, you know.”

Martin stayed still. The red light that came so easily to Calix. The greater size of Somchai’s Chassis. The way he could make his anger a living source of energy.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“I-“

“Ah, don’t be so serious,”the Dutch Proxy joked, though Martin heard no joke here.”You can go and tell everyone.

See, this Chassis, it came with a sense of smell.”

Dijkstra left it at that. Wait…

“You can smell a person over an entire world?”

Suddenly his fire or the other attendant perks Chassis came with seemed somewhat lacking.

“Not an entire world, but if I’m close it, sure.”

“And you didn’t say this way back…”

“Because I didn’t want to get their hopes up. Besides, you tell me how many people that can turn invisible in our class there and are, and the way to fly and we’ll be even.”

Even was the word, and not the tone of his voice, but he understood. Some aurics came easier, Chassis not withstanding. Nobody in the class had shown anything close to Berenice’s aptitude for wards to name one.

“That what you wanted to tell me?”

“And that we should go back and find a set of stones.”

“Why?”

“Think about. If she passes through one…”

“…you’d be able to tell.”

The wind rustled the tops of the trees. A small monkey with big, big eyes shouted something to its kindred. A group of cranes staggered away from a predatory cat.

“Promise not to tell?”

Martin considered of the way some of their classmates thought of him. This secret that Dijkstra had offered.

“You find me Berenice and I’ll never tell.”

__________

They gathered at a set of standing stones that Westerfield had found. The rest of their group… Listhofer, Maier and Muratovic gone first.

…and Calix had let them. Apparently they had caught up to her, deeming the Spanish Proxy the least offended among the gathered Proxies. That fact served to inform Martin that they weren’t just uncaring; they were also socially incompetent.

“They were dead weight——let’s be honest here Martin. They’d slow us down. They’d—“

“Alright, you’ve made your point.”

He would have to ask how and why Dijkstra had Berenice’s scents however. If, and when the Crown Championship occurred…

No Host attacked them as the countdown swung down. No ambush, no group of mystery Proxies showing up. Martin was glad to be rid of them. He’d in all honestly prefer someone like Somaronov or Chevalier, who he knew hated him. Maier and the others veiled their disgust, but he could tell. Call it the sense of a rat.

The light obliterated all.

__________

The sulphur was the first thing he noticed.

Then the glowing rocks. No, there was a different word for these. Molten.

In the periphery of his sight Dijkstra stilled.

Got you, Sonnentag.

“With these numbers, we’d better stay in a single group,” Martin said.

“Cadre——that’s what a group of Proxies are called, yes?”

“As a cadre,” Westerfield reiterated.

“I can’t fly.”

Calix frowned at him; Westerfield shrugged.

“Soleri, this is your operation. You fly him.”

Martin shrugged. Hadn’t he already flown Berenice, carried her and in turn been carried like the most ungainly sack of potatoes ever?

Pride meant little to him.

Rather than resort to the angerfire, which he couldn’t control to, he used the standard gravity-auric, lifting himself and Dijkstra aloft.

“I’ll point us in the direction,” Dijkstra whispered through the communication-ward as they trailed after their two red-clad comrades.

“And if they ask why we’re going in any particular order?”

“Lie. Say that you recognised one of her wards.”

With the ears of Dijkstra’s wolf Chassis swerving in one direction as his compass, Martin led them through Dijkstra over a landscape that made not even the slightest attempt to mimic reality.

Was this what Administrators created in their spare time? Did they even have spare time? He had never asked Coastline and so he promised himself that he would.

Lava flowed through escarpments made for water, buttes and pillars standing vigil, their tops capped by shining matter slowly solidifying into charcoal.

They flew beneath red clouds, the likes of which lit up by blue lighting, and if he stared too closely, the shadows would play tricks on him. When he closed his eyes, the blots on the inside of his eyes would turn into horrors.

Once the sights would horrify him. Oh, they still did. But he was changing. The things he had seen since he came to the Vänern Arcology and the tutelage of Raja Sviratham were hammering into…he knew not what, but not the man who had left Camp Sala.

Left, beyond a lavafall.

Right, over a mount that crackled as ants the size of his hands scurried through ash. Martin sincerely hoped those were drones and not genemods.

Over a field of soldiers in basalt.

Then——“the scent stops here.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the scent stops here. Either she teleported——the scent vanished here!”

They hovered over a black plateau that stood over a pool of gold. The heat was punishing and were it not for the protective embrace of their Chassis, they’d slowly be dying.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Because Dijkstra cannot scent Sonnentag from beyond this point, Calix”, Westerfield answered.

“You knew?!”

The wolf-helmet made the Dutch Proxy’s surprise take on tones of ridiculous, a cartoon figure made real.

“Dijkstra, I, like so many of our classmates have access to the enhanced hearing of a Chassis. If you are going to hide your secrets, then at least use aurics to cover up your tracks,” Westerfield admonished.

“What scent?”

Westerfield ignored Calix’s question again, which only served to irritate her further.

“If the scent disappears here…”

Cameron Westerfield took a large breath.”Berenice Sonnentag, it’s me, Cameron Westerfield.”

Silence. An ashmount shattered and the ants took flight, swarming in the background.

“When I abandoned the bout at the beginning of the Tutelage I told you that I don’t care for pride; that I live only for the death of Morrow.”

Silence again. If, if someone had opened their mouth to say something to violate the sanctity of the moment——Martin wondered what Westerfield would have done.

There was a deep sentiment made real here. But nobody greeted the words.

The wind carried both words and the will. Nothing.

“That you did,” said a Proxy levitating from beneath the plateau. Her Chassis was green and white, the typical make made popular since the days of the Devastation. She stared at him, Dijkstra and Calix. It was hard to tell beneath the Chassis, but Martin suspected she was quietly baffled.

”What are you all doing here?”

Calix shot Martin a look, as if to say, I told you so.

“We…”Martin swallowed. Why had he trekked after her? Was it for her sake? Berenice, who could ward up two rocks so tight that even a Regial wouldn’t find it? Or…was it for his sake?

He went up to her and the embrace he had planned died. He clasped her shoulder instead.”I’m sorry,” he said, a deja vu to that time she had apologised to him.

Something in her startled body language told him she too remembered.

“What for?”

Words exchanged, just like the last time. Now he was the apologiser, she the returnee.

He shrugged. She had told him about her fight with running, and in this they were alike. But whereas she ran from things, Martin ran to things, but never was he on time.

“Being late”.

He looked as Calix led the rest of their little cadre below the plateau, giving the two of them a moment.

He turned on his heels, took an aborted step, halted by the grace of Berenice Sonnentag’s next words. They were so quiet that even the enhanced hearing afforded him by the Chassis was barely enough to pick them up.

“…thanks.”

Was there something garbed in her voice? A sob? Mucus forcing its way?

Martin didn’t glance back. He didn’t need to.

_____

Berenice had created a fortress. Of a sort. There was a square opening, warded twice for sound and sight.

Another ward layered into the rock ensured that no scans made their way out.

Martin suspected that there was another personal ward around her Chassis, but he wasn't perceptive to tell what it was. One wrought in an endoauric base, because he felt malice from it, or what he took to be malice.

Dijkstra’s snout had been drawn back at the impression of it, which told him enough.

Sonnentag even had a clock to time her Field, the better to replenish the wards.

Still, they had greater worries.

“In five minutes, the clock strikes midnight. When that happens,” the German Proxy said,”the intensity of the trial will increase, if previous patterns hold true.”

The words…they reminded Martin of how little he had slept, and how long it had been since thought of his body. It wasn’t that his tiredness had gone away, but it had been…strangely distant, as if paused. He could tell that the Chassis was enabling him in this, but thinking of it too clearly made him tired, so he didn’t. Even so, he was tired. The flight on the beach, the whalehunter, the desert and the vast Host, later trying to coral all those Proxies into helping him find Berenice…

“We’ don’t know that,” Calix said, unable to let the matter lie still.

“Calix,” Westerfield whispered, and to Soleri’s undying surprise Calix went quiet. What had happened to those two when he was gone?

“We will prepare a way out. In case,”Westerfield said.

He made a gesture and a teardrop of red energy formed in the center of Berenice’s refuge, the oblong form smoothing out to become the traditional gateway of portals.

“That’s going to damage the integrity of my wards,” Berenice complained, but not overly so. It figured that even safe, she’d want a card in her sleeves.

She paused, examining the exoauric.”This is not a orthodox gate.”

Martin examined the gate, seeing in his own eyes a series of strings that turned on themselves, a self-propagating Mobius strip. Now that she had said it…there was something wrong with it, not that he could tell anything else than that.

“As the last of us passes through, the gate will unmoor, slicing up anything too close to us.”

“That’s——where did you learn that?”

“Paris,” Calix said in a sober voice.”He learned it in Paris.”

Their internal clocks chimed at the toll of midnight and the gate winked out.