“For the advance into central Europe, and the clearing of Paris, senior Proxies are requested.” — extract from a official communique, 2023, latter stages of the Devastation.

Editor’s note: this was, as far as we can tell, the first time the phrase ‘senior Proxy’ was employed.

2095

Northern Quadrant, Sweden

The slit in reality elongated through the foreign interdiction, a yawning mouth transitioning into a leer.

From it, they issued.

The mouth slammed shut.

None landed.

Some flew through air, born of repurposed gravity.

Other shot through the air, propelled by force that broke barriers of sound.

A rare few rode drones made to mimic creatures foreign to the world; antlered dragons, stags with silvered manes and things not dreamt of.

Like a school of fish they detached, spears flying through the holes of their defense, lances of light illuminating the white of birches beneath.

No words were said, for mere uttered phrases could not convey the mercury-quick orders required to fight such a Host.

So they thought as one and what they thought was this:

DESTROY.

_____

Nike Andromache intercepted the light-lance, her Field shimmering like the heart of a ocean, clutching the exotic projectile in one gauntleted hand and rotated, hip to hip.

She raked the adjacent copse like the gardener removes weeds from his greenery; methodically, pausing and waiting for something to come.

Smoke wafted up in black sheets and she made a mental note to have sub-routine make a schedule for replanting.

“Now, where are you?”

She scanned the vicinity, the exoauric technique feeding her mind with an echolocated map. Some spots were blurred, or too smooth. She knew them as she knew the back of her hand. Easy, easy.

She made a sound.

No Regials, these. In her view, not that such a perspective had been requested, it was a waste of senior personnel to clear what amounted roadblocks.

Very well, then.

She rose higher through the air. A Regial, of the High variety, specialised in interdiction was here, which ruled out spatial endoaurics.

Oh, it was one thing for an Administrator to brute-force its way through the exoauric net, but even a senior Proxy would shred their Field before working their way out.

It wasn’t a matter of Field-strength or depth, but rather, specialisation. Angles, angles.

Her Field roared and twenty sheets of formless heat blew away the clouds. A second technique, endoauric in nature, tinted the sheets with cerulean blue. The sheets folded on themselves, forming marbles with swirls.

She made a stroke with one hand, declaration and rejection both and the marbles fell like stars.

There was a crack, stirring the forest.

Great flocks of bird took to the air.

“…and for the next trick…”

The trees slammed together, the ground itself pushing away from the center of her technique—and then pillars of fire roared up and above the skyline.

Already impatient, she summoned another hundred of the Midnight Orbs.

They loomed above the rose-clad Proxy, the folds of her rose Chassis created in the likeliness of ancient togas.

Andromache would finish these off and rejoin the greater offensive. Once they’d murdered the Regial of this region she could get back to the real war.

Back to Gibraltar.

She made a thumb down.

The forest quailed and shook.

_____

“Ahahahhaha!”

Rock and gravel fountained, trailing a swathe across twilight sky. Out burst a demifox, the many-tailed Host swiping at the Red Knight.

He seized two of the appendages with his fists, the rest with his Field. The limbs, which were closer to tentacles, opened, revealing lidless eyes.

The Proxy stared into the abyss of madness, and madness flinched.

The demifox opened its circular mouth—but the Knight bit first. Teeth sharpened by a Field as old as the Devastation went through the metal, circuits and out. Ravenous hands sought the chest of the Host, carving, wanting, opening it from genderless groin and he pulled.

The explosion illuminated Riordan Havanna, known as the Red Knight among the Arcologies. His mouth was open, the teeth of which were glistening with white fluid that served as blood among the lesser Host. The clear panes of his triangular helmet revealed eyes perpetually stained by Field-bleed.

Then.

Smoke.

He drifted through it, body spasming. In the background, a voice. Requesting further updates. The Knight’s body rotated midair, smoke granting him a dark halo. Still it went, the full-body shaking.

“Yes, yes, there are more of them.”

The Knight could scan the vicinity but he didn’t need to. Once, so very long ago, he had drunk the blood of a Sovereign in the battle that had killed the West.

He closed his eyes.

And he felt them, felt the Regial hiding kilometers away in some cave above the tree-line. Alas, that small detail would have to wait for High Command. He stopped vibrating.

He shot down, still carrying the halo of smoke, shooting, willing, hunting, down into the earth, turning himself transparent for the span of moments.

He was beneath them. Yes. They had no heartbeats, the Host, but all the same he could feel the heat of their weird blood. Clever foxes they were, but not clever enough. They should have hid in the mantle.

“I will shortly excavate my section.”

The voice on the other end, a junior Proxy tasked with maintaining the network of thoughts, squeaked.

Riordan Havanna, who had been an old man before the Host came from the sky, pulled on his Field, dragging on it til he could feel it breaking.

He held it there.

The science behind the exoauric was quite simple; transmute pieces of earth into antimatter touched by molecule-slivers of Field then channel the force of the mayhem up.

He let go.

The earth stirred, dust obscuring his helmet-panes. No matter.

He could feel them, feel the frantic motion of their tails as they were blown skyward, the screams through their throats and the satisfaction as some of the survivors landed.

He could have kill them in one stroke, but this was funnier. He had smoked the foxes out, now—he summoned a bar of metal, shaping it as he levitated through the torn earth, quick strokes cutting away what he perceived to be unnecessary.

He raised the rifle—closer to a bazooka really- and a comet of crimson malice shot out.

The demifoxes, now without a ground to den in, ran.

The Red Knight laughed. This was so much more fun than the front.

_____

“N9, proceed.”

The former Regial trekked with vast limber legs over the hill, eyes appearing on the furry stalks that served as both transport and sensors. Prey, it chittered back.

She craned her head, the cowl of her Chassis opening but an milimetre to allow for more light to seep in. It made her look like a cyclops, one junior Proxy claimed. Alas, youth.

The hair began to vibrate, the-once indestructible material animated anew by a Field. Ten limbs scythed up high into the air—then burrowed through the rock.

It found itself on a ledge.

Like called to like, and for a moment the not-Regial beheld a sheet of multicolored lights, and the not-Regial knew the creature to be one of the Myriad. A cousin in their great purpose—it halted. A will like the end of the world, like horizons ending, like death itself vanquished whatever echoes of it former self it might have.

“I have given you an order, N9. Proceed.”

The sheet transformed, a combination of endoaurics and exoaurics, Field turning to matter and a tiger in the shades of rainbow roared to shake the hills.

“N8, hold. N7, mutilate.”

A levitating claw the size of an arcology-apartment burst through the hole the first Regial had created. The tiger leapt, jumping over the furry legs, ripping loose chunks with each bite. N9 twitched, pain following the sympathetic link next to its operator.

The claw dragged itself on a collision course with the tiger.

The scything limbs came down like a guillotine, cutting through rock but feline horror merely flipped around.

The claw flopped above the tiger, slamming down not with just weight, but the exoauric force of a building— onto rainbow light. Glimmering, oily slicks. Separate smudges, dancing in mockery.

A corridor of light burst onto the scene; the tiger, newly reformed. The claw, inching its way towards the cat. The cantilevered horror, one stalk raised above the scene. The eye saw it all. It blinked.

“Got you.”

She took a breath. Of all her Living Puppets, this one took the most out of her.

A head continued to push its way through the opening and the tiger Regial cowered. Even the claw and the limb horror shook. Even repurposed, reanimated, they knew an apex predator.

A Sovereign.

The monster that had ended the Wellsprings on Saturn opened its mouth and—

Her knee struck the ground. Blood, mucus and pink intestines spewed, hurtled, out through the opening of her cowl. “N9.N8. Retreat.”

The claw tumbled down beneath the ledge.

The stalker-horror pulled its insectoid shape out through the opening, careful to never touch the gigantic face.

Agoran, once Sovereign, once the Breaker of Arcologies, opened its mouth.

The rainbow tiger transformed into a column of sparkling lights, flowing through the rock of the hills upwards, its frantic bobbing betraying its feelings.

She smiled. In the many Tutelages she had supervised the refrain behind the psychology of the Host had thus gone repeated. The Host felt no fear, so the usual attempts to torture Regials both High and Low had failed. The attempt to demoralise the Enemy had failed, in turn just demoralised Mankind.

Yet.

The corpse of a Sovereign, animated through the auspices of aurics opened its gaping maw, and through it a gray-green cloud surged. The billowing viridian went through the hills, up and beyond the tree-line, the snow above and most importantly, the hostile Regial.

“I have you know. N7. Execute.”

Just the shadow of a Sovereign’s auric was enough to gutter a senior’s Field, but she managed. Despite the various Administrators saying it couldn’t be done. Despite even Havrasalam’s admonishment, the perhaps greatest engineer of the world claiming a hollowness in her attempt. Success, where they had failed.

She had turned the Enemy’s power back onto the Host.

_____

The junior Proxy saw destruction. One section of the forest smouldered, vast pits glowing with bits of the lesser Host.

Another section had come resemble nothing so much as a series of trenches, dug with a ruler.

She—

The hills shattered.

Fungal tumors, green of width and grey of length swelled through the bedrock, consuming the few trees, devouring whole the wildlife of the region that had grown lax since mankind left.

The interdiction faded, as if never there.

Chiyo Moyomoto, tasked with holding the interface of telepathic network open through the use of mind, simply reeled.

Her levitation actually wobbled and she descended for a couple of meters before righting herself.

She had seen her mother and peers use their aurics, but never one a scale like this.

She teleported up and over the hills, estimating.

The cracked hills looked like bleeding knuckles seen from above, albeit covered…growths.

It took her repeated jumps to cover the destruction.

No less than a kilometer, perhaps even as many as three. Through the Hierarchy of Power she made a simple calculation. The sheer depth of a senior Proxy’s field…

She began to understand why her mother had volunteered her for the clearing forward to Luleå. She had thought herself finished. Strong. But between junior and senior there was an abyss. Oh, she knew that already. But this made it clear in a way that could never be ignored.

She focused her will, creating the exoauric.

“Stockholm Administrator, the Regial in this region responsible for the interdiction has been destroyed. Requesting further troops.”

“…granted junior Proxy Moyomoto.”

That…that title stung. As it should be, Chiyo promised herself.

“Name your foe, Administrator.”

“Name your foe.”