The Nature of Fate

— Pashtuk Garden —

With only remote meetings to attend and no classes to give, most of Taylor's time was his. He trained with his bulwarks in the early mornings, followed by breakfast cooked by Iraj, and then a little time watering the garden. The simple work of pulling water up from wells and letting it flow into narrow irrigation channels was physically satisfying and kept the garden from burning up in the hottest part of the year. The garden could survive without the extra water but would benefit from their efforts. Anisca was bringing most of Pashtuk's people home with her, and Taylor didn't want their first sight to be himself squatting in a neglected, sun-burned garden.

With only two other disciples around Taylor could let his spirit unfurl, let it bloom until it covered the entire garden and beyond. Inside the confines of Red Tower, he would have swamped the mirrors with his spirit until the novices couldn't see their own reflections to train. With hardly anyone else around he could spread out a little, feel the territory around him, manipulate currents of spirit without worrying about how it would affect his trainees.

Like any good desert dweller, he rested during mid-day hours. Early evenings were for reading Pashtuk's small library. He found the room full of books, stacks of painted wooden boards, connected to the circle's meeting room. Most were records of past harvests, weekly summaries lined with small brushes. But some of the rope-bound volumes were histories. Taylor found the oldest of these and made new copies, using the arts to shape deadwood into writing surfaces and paint words on them as fast as he could read the originals.

Some ancient disciple, an especially talented one who must have hated copying by hand, had created a prayer, a so-called "cryptic" that quoted scripture but didn't come from Book of Prayers. When Taylor made a new origin for Nexus he kept the Enclave cryptics (he knew them all) and added several of his own. Hunting scripture for the cryptics was a rite of passage for his students, proof that they had learned the basics well enough to seek new prayers on their own. The very best of them were quick to ask how they could make cryptics of their own.

Taylor could only smile: most of them had so far to go. Practice silent prayer. Learn to pound out tirun armor scales by the hundred. Master instant prayer. Make a fragment of sun. Make a score of fragments. Then the path to mastery will be open. That's what he told his best students. Strangely, the list of feats did not dissuade them. They knew the heights he spoke about were reachable: hadn't Phillip the Younger done so already? He had even left them markers along the way.

At night, after any remote meetings, he worked on the communication system for his informants. The requirements were tricky. Informants could talk to Nexus but not each other, while Nexus had to talk to all of them. The devices had to be discrete, innocuous, and unique. If one was somehow discovered for what it was, the other links couldn't be compromised. And they had to be reliably powered: that was the trickiest sticking point. It was one thing to power sounding boards with beads of semi-precious stones and cobble together an underground network of healers willing to recharge them (for a nominal fee), but Taylor didn't want his listening network compromised because the links needed mana.

The cycle that threatened human life on planet Tenobre was due to mana exuded by the local sun, waxing and waning on a cycle eleven hundred and nine years long. The cycle was on the upswing, causing more and bigger monsters to appear. But all that excess mana could be a source of power, too. The ancients had known this: Taylor had salvaged mana-charging solar panels from an ancient mecha. The giant machine had been a menace but, once defeated, it yielded a treasure trove of materials and ideas.

With remote collaboration from Sir Farr and Madam Lilian, his artificers, Taylor created miniature versions of the salvaged solar panels. Once he had a working cell and had the hang of making them quickly, he embedded them into all kinds of everyday things. His favorite was a lady's folding fan, with micro-etching that shimmered in the sun like peacock's feathers. He made mana-charging panels into picture frames, decorative boxes, brooches, a square stonework vase, and anything else he could think of that could sit quietly in the sun and maybe not be noticed. Tiny baguettes of spirit stones (garnet was convenient for its hardness and commonality) were hidden inside, capable of storing enough mana to power a link for a full day of active use.

The links themselves were also disguised as common things. Earrings, bracelets, hat pins, buttons, pen knives, and paperweights. Anything small enough to hold against one's ear would do. When the links ran out of power they were charged by placing them onto the panels to absorb the mana stored within.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The listening station looked like a switchboard, with a wired headset and rows of lights. When a link was activated its corresponding light went on in the console. The operator plugged their headset into a little hole beneath the light and they could talk to the informant. The switchboard was modular and expandable, a concept that excited Farr and Lilian to no end. Taylor had his artificers build the console at Red Tower, and they tested each link as Taylor brought them online.

It should have been a great week for Taylor, a chance to enjoy his training and crafting mostly unencumbered by the daily headaches of leadership. But he started getting headaches on the fourth day. He was constantly aware of being, not exactly watched, but more like being pointed at. Selected. Fingered. He could not escape the sense of being followed by a dire premonition that grew in strength every day.

Taylor was being summoned. And summonings were never good things. Never, not once in a century of bouncing between worlds, had Taylor arrived in a new place and thought to himself, "Jackpot! I'm so lucky to be here."

In a few more years it might not matter, but Nexus was in its infancy. Whatever desperate soul was calling him, whether they be an imperial mage, mad researcher, dying youth, or (most recently) feckless Lavradian king, they'd have to wait. He wasn't done with Tenobre yet, and he had the means to resist. On the first day the summons started, Taylor gathered his bulwarks and gave them their instructions. Inez, Mila, and Milo had been through this once before, but the Tabuas were new.

"The last time this happened, you were badly hurt," Mila reminded him, "you need to tell Mahzad and Khali. I know you don't like to share this with anyone outside our group, but I think you should."

"That was awful," added Milo, remembering their mad dash by gurantor to the nearest healer. "I am not doing that again. But Sister Khali was there too, remember? You'd just poached her and her two friends from Enclave. So, she already knows. It's only Mahzad you're telling."

Inez agreed. "That's prudent. Two healers are better than one."

So Mahzad and Khali were brought into his confidence and took the news in stride. Big magic incoming. Explosions imminent. Emergency healing might be required, so sleep in shifts and keep your stones full. To them, it was another day at Nexus.

The days of impending doom dragged on for Taylor, gradually pulling more and more of his focus away from crafting and into the summoning that dogged him. Whatever spell his summoner was weaving hadn't reached him yet: there was no mana present. There was only that finger of fate pointing at him, the leading edge of any summons.

To summon anything, the summoner first had to choose the thing to be summoned, a major feat all on its own. Not just anyone would do. There were two general cases of summoning. One type was convenience, or looking for the easiest person to summon. Yanking a newly deceased soul from its predefined transit and shoving it inside a mostly intact body was relatively simple when you didn't care what kind of end product you got. Taylor's first few summonings had been as good as accidents, plucking him from between lives to carry on the lives that others had given up on. Wrong place, wrong time. What made the summoning so easy was the lack of interference from the physical world: souls that were entangled with physical bodies and events were hard to move, but souls untethered were easy, relatively speaking.

In other situations, the summoner was looking for a kind of hero, a term that carried different definitions depending on their desires. The divination searched the cosmos looking for some special attribute: magical or martial power, intense charisma, or even the ability to rule. These summonings skewed heavily towards, "I need a powerful fighter who will kill my enemies and not ask too many questions."

The worst summonings, like the one that brought Taylor to Tenobre, like the one he was facing now, had Fate magic mixed in. The caster made a desired prediction (the prophecy), and their magic would find the person who fit that future best. Fate magic was, in Taylor's most unhumble opinion, selfishness posing as foresight; A trap disguised as wisdom; A poison chalice best left untouched; The worst cheat in all magic.

A key component of any Fate magic was in the telling of it. If none of the parties who were directly involved knew about the prophecy, then it wasn't any likelier to come true than if the prediction had never been made. But when the prophecy was shared, the receivers of that future were thereby entangled with it. Their present states became dependent on the foreseen future: that was the foundational truth of Fate magic.

Every world has the familiar stories: A man hears a prophecy that he will kill what is most dear to him and sets out on a path to avoid it, only to play directly into the prediction with his actions. It wasn't a tragedy; it was a trap. Hearing the prophecy entangled the unfortunate receiver with their tragic future selves, and made escape almost impossible.

So Taylor didn't look. He didn't read the reasons written on the wall of his consciousness, or try to pry into why he was being chosen. Whatever predicate was being cast into the cosmos, looking to ensnare his soul, Taylor didn't want to know. Maybe it would be somebody else's problem, or maybe it would altogether fail. Maybe the royal wizard of some intolerant king was about to lose his head for ineptitude. Whatever. It wasn't going to be Taylor's problem.

All Taylor had to do was wait for the magic to start, so he could counter it.

Naturally, it came at a most inconvenient time.