Winter Thoughtspace

— Thoughtspace —

It was winter in his thoughtspace, a realm of silence and snowfall. Bare trees held sparkling white fingers to the sky, a world in prayer. Even Taylor's breath climbed skyward. He knew the winter was just his way of sulking, but he couldn't change it without changing his mood. And that was hard to do after killing … he'd let someone else do the math. When he closed his eyes, he saw a wide ring of bodies piled higher than his head. He still wasn't done killing, not yet. He could worry about the winter later.

The forest was the 'public' space in Taylor's mind, where he invited others to talk over a distance. He had just come from the library of his private mind, where he'd been organizing recent events, doing the deferred work of tidying his memories and recollections into records he could access and, hopefully, draw important lessons from. Overall, his performance only had a few blemishes. There was that trouble with Masood, from which he learned he needed to know his captains better. And he could have planned better for Zaid's unexpected change in direction, but at least the Neck was prepared ahead of time as a possible combat zone. Still, if the storm hadn't shown up when it did, he would have sacrificed Pashtuk. There were two ways of looking at it: either Taylor got lucky, or the law of averages caught up with Zaid. After all, autumn haboobs were normal. One was bound to show up sooner or later.

There was more to think about before he arrived in Dace, but Taylor didn't have the information he needed. The silver messenger box was in the train car, on a bench next to Taylor's physical body, waiting for Rector Mika's intelligence drop. It would come in its own time. Until then, Taylor would rest in his futobel avatar form and watch the snow. It wasn't time for the meeting yet, so he had this minute to himself. The forest was one of his favorite places, lightly tended and thus slightly wild. It was pointless to agonize over which parts of his mind were truly him: the semi-wild public spaces or the highly-organized private ones. They were both as essential as breath and blood were to his body.

Taylor learned Thoughtmancy during his third summoning, from the Most Contemplative Sages of the M'rin Star System. He was one of a legion of adepts trained to organize the thoughts of a Sage, a being of consciousness so vast it employed hundreds of other consciousnesses to sort and order its experiences. That life ended as so many others had: suddenly and senselessly. He'd been sent to collate sets of memories from two vastly different ends of the Sage's mind, and learned … something. Whatever it was, it was removed from Taylor's memories by a defter hand than his own. The Sage thanked him, Taylor remembered that much, then extinguished his life. The Sages, knowing souls were reincarnated, had no moral issues with moving a lesser mind onto its next life prematurely. Next thing he knew, Taylor inhabited the half-dead body of an Orbital Trooper riddled with blaster fire and mental trauma. The dying man had made a dying wish for someone else to fight and die in his place, and somehow that was enough to call Taylor's soul to him.

But that wasn't the past Taylor had come to dwell on today. After he finished organizing, he explored (again) everything he had on the deeper magics, but he had surpassed his mentors in this regard. He had created origins for three systems of magic, a feat none of his past teachers could claim even once. He made the Nexus Book of Prayer, which was largely a copy of Enclave's prayers, themselves copies of First Enclave's prayers. He wrote the Songbook, prayer-like verses sung to music that let congregations create minor magical effects. Finally, and most importantly in the long run, he invented the Inscription Arts. The few artifacts he had made so far would change the world, and he was just getting started.

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So, there was nothing helpful from his past lives about locating and destroying origins. He knew more on the subject than any of his old teachers, with the possible exception of the Sages, and they didn't use systemized magic because they could Will into existence anything smaller than a planet. Taylor would have to feel his way through the next task blindly, which made it all the more dangerous. His own origins were indestructible through any normal means. What would Enclave's origin be like after hundreds of years of practitioners and politics propping up its supranatural existence? If he couldn't destroy Enclave's origin, then he could bury it, lock it behind a Sanctuary, and send someone to refresh the ward every year. But that was a flawed solution: later generations could forget or get too curious, or a hostile entity could go looking for it. The surest route was total destruction. Taylor had learned early not to leave committed enemies at his back.

As the meeting time neared, he put down a totem of pure thought to prevent any emotive nonsense. The others started appearing in response to his invitations, their avatars taking the form of animals, mythical creatures, fantastic figures, or just themselves. There were only six today, but the giant four-armed Obsidian-Ma'Tocha did most of the talking. She updated them on Kashmar's near-extermination and received the news in return from Hyskos, Sand Castle, Red Tower, Gallia, and Lavradio. Nobody commented on the weather.

"And what's our Hierarch up to now?" asked Dean Mataba in his arkto avatar. All eyes, human, animal, and otherwise, turned toward Taylor.

"I'm on a train to Dace to kill the Shadow Council and destroy Enclave's origin," said Futobel-Phillip, still watching the snow, "then I'll meet up with Ma'Tocha in Kashmar. After we tear down their three pillars, they shouldn't bother the Calique ever again. That takes care of every major potential threat to our new home."

"What about the Grand Company?" asked Edos.

"They know better now," said Antelope-Leila. "I paid their Supreme Commander a visit, and we had a very frank but polite discussion. They won't be taking any more jobs against us or the Calique in the foreseeable future. We'll need a long-term plan for them, though. Too much peace is bad for their business."

"When we rebuild Hyskos' government, we'll nationalize the Grand Company and give their most capable leaders meaningful positions." Half the group looked at him with shocked expressions while the other half were confused, but Futubel-Taylor didn't mind them. Something was pulling at his consciousness, and he didn't like the feel of it.

"You want to what?" said the shocked half of his visitors.

"It's the best way. I'd explain but," just then, the sky started flashing with red light. He sighed. He wasn't up for this, but he didn't have a choice. "I'm being summoned to another world, and I don't have time to prevent it. Don't worry, my people know what to do."

A dozen questions exploded at him from his guests, but instead of answering any of them, Taylor dumped them out of his thoughtspace and onto their metaphorical asses. He had no idea what would happen if someone was in his head during a summons, and he wasn't going to find out.