"This is the thing that tortures you?"

"That's one way to put it, I guess," he says. "If you touch it—" he remembers the feeling, the few times it's happened to him, and the ones he got secondhand from Elaneth-imire. It's torture by default, because the circumstances required to make it not torture are kind of particular, but what it really is is just - soul contact. An unbearably intense sense of intimacy, an overwhelmingly vast magnification of everything you feel about the person who is touching your soul.

He takes it by the chain and puts it in his pocket and says "I have a tactical problem. There are people trying to find me, and they have a lot of resources. Sit down, you need more detail than that."

He sits down. "Okay, what's the problem?"

And he describes the people trying to find them, the resources they have - "I don't know if you can just wish for a way to track people across dimensions but you very well might be able to -"

"Somebody somewhere might have a soul power that can make you untraceable," is his first thought. "Or my alt might be able to do it. Our souls have a three-day turnaround on major powershifts, which in my case means very little because my soul can't do much and is using most of its space for things it would be reluctant to give up, but in his case it means that if you want something done and don't think it's otherwise possible, 'tell Elaneth-imire and wait three days' is always an option, alongside 'ask Esarkan if he can find a soulbearer who happens to have something relevant'."

"...I'll mention to him that it's a problem. What's yours devoting its space to?"

Healing aura, about six feet in radius but very robust; lie detection, completely passive; osanwe, with a branch for manufacturing magic items very quickly and another branch for enforcing his mental privacy and a sub-branch from there that prevents him from ever hiding any thoughts from Maitimo; a little bit of space probably in reserve for protection from hostile mind control in case he ever needs that; a little bit of space probably in reserve for letting Maitimo make him feel like his soul is being touched by imaginary strangers in case Maitimo ever feels like doing that.

"...'powers' is sort of an interesting word for it -"

"What do you mean?"

"Half those things disable you."

"They're still - capacities my soul has, so, soul powers. Anyway, I'd argue that the privacy exception is more beneficial than otherwise. There is nothing I want to accomplish that could be accomplished better by hiding thoughts from you than by not doing that."

"I can see why my alt was -

 - I do not feel secure enough in my life and the protection of my people right now to pursue a relationship."

"Okay," he says, "so - does that mean 'go home' or does it mean 'stick around and consult on tactical problems and maybe do some magical engineering', or?"

Also, this is a Maitimo. Elaneth-imire will resurrect him as many times as it takes, fight as many gods as it takes; if the interdimensional meddlers come for him, they're going to have to go through Elaneth-imire first, and they will find that prohibitively difficult. But Raika-seren appreciates that he doesn't have a good reason to believe that and there wouldn't be a whole lot of point in trying to convince him.

"You think you can make yourself helpful? I can use trustworthy helpful people. I can give you the recipe for eidetic memory necklaces."

"I would be delighted to make you eidetic memory necklaces. If I'm remembering right, in the current state of my soul I can do a year's work in three or four hours," he says. (Secondhand memories of a past/future that never happened to him are weird but useful.)

"This is a computer," he says, "I don't think Nuimë has them yet -"

"It doesn't! What's a computer?"

"It's like all of the books in all of the libraries in several worlds, written very very small - it's why we were working with the Yeerks, consenting hosts for the knowledge of how to do this -"

"Huh," he says, fascinated.

"Yeah." He pulls up a window. "Eidetic memory necklace instructions. They don't even take a year."

He grins and leans forward and reads them. Probably he should wear the first necklace he makes, he has a really good memory but it's not literally perfect and if he's going to be making a lot of artifacts the lost time from occasional mistakes will add up eventually...

That works. "I promised your emperor three once I had more."

"What for?" he wonders.

"The teleport."