Page 16 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

AHILYA

They moved through the jungle in a blur. Eskayra kept a brutal pace, marching without break. Ahilya trudged behind her, then moved alongside her, trying to keep her attention only on the architects who would periodically break out in sudden tears. They seemed physically fine, yet they displayed none of their earlier alacrity. Several couldn’t be roused at all. Pari had to be carried on a makeshift stretcher, dragged through the forest floor. Chaiyya refused to walk, simply staring into nothing and weeping. It was only the mention of her children that made her blink and follow, her steps faltering.

Non-architects were faring no better. They had seemed to escape the fate of their architect friends, but two days into the march, Ranjeev complained of terrible headaches that brought him sinking to his knees, gasping for breath. Meena vomited all over herself, her skin breaking out in hives, and Teertha and Manogna, builders from Eskayra’s team, had to be asked the same question several times before a response was forthcoming, as if they had trouble hearing.

There was enough to be troubled by. The jungle had changed, and though they took the shortest path Eskayra could map, the devastation that Ahilya’s battle with Iravan had unleashed was everywhere.

Hills had arisen where once there had been none. Trees lay sunken across their path. Massive, gaping holes with water streaming down them created chasms they could not circumvent. Eskayra stopped often, consulting the paper maps she owned, muttering to herself before leading them on. Sometimes, she consulted with Ahilya, and though Ahilya tried to help, she knew it was fruitless.

The jungle was dense, and it was impossible to chart any sense of direction. Even before this destruction, Ahilya had needed the help of the Virohi to reach the city-site.

Ahilya tried to understand what had occurred. The jungle had been still, until the Moment had shattered. All this change was a result of that cataclysm. Or maybe this was the Virohi’s doing? Had she brought this about by letting the cosmic creatures escape Irshar? She attempted to speak with them, hunting for them within the mirrored chambers of her Etherium, but they were no longer there. They were silent, curled into a tight ball within her heart like they were nesting within the core tree. Nothing she said to revive them made a difference. She remembered that haunting image of them that had filled her mind after Iravan’s attack. Her own face, perforated and pocked, as though Iravan had attacked her consciousness with his bomb. Her mind swam, and for Eskayra’s sake she tried to focus, but she had trouble thinking.

Eventually, Eskayra stopped consulting her. They traveled past landscapes they had not seen before, and though her friend did not say it, Ahilya knew that their earlier estimation of how soon they would return to the ashram had been a joke. Neither of them could have known the scale of devastation the battle had unleashed.

Ahilya lost track of how many hours passed. The canopy of the jungle lifted, and they moved in a surreal dimness, unable to tell whether it was day or night. No one spoke, and the architects had to all be helped with water and waste.

At one point, Eskayra tied a rope around everyone’s waist, keeping them connected lest they lose an architect on the march. At another she passed around dry crackers, forcing everyone to eat. Ahilya’s mouth felt like bark but she swallowed the rice biscuits that tasted like sandpaper. One foot in front of another, it was all that mattered. The landscape echoed on, trees rippling, breaks in the sunlight, twilight descending. Ahilya blinked when a light caught her eyes—dawn? How many dawns had come and gone?

Eskayra had led them over a small hill. The expeditionary team huddled together, breathing hard.

“Rages,”

Eskayra breathed, her voice coming out cracked.

“What has happened here?”

Ahilya stared. Eskayra took her trembling hand in her own. Ahilya couldn’t think, exhausted with hunger, but the longer she stared, the more the dim shapes began to make sense.

Gigantic arms and legs frozen in shadow. Curving vines that looked like monstrous tentacles. Misty shades of smoke made solid. This was Irshar, but it was starkly different to the ashram she had left. Ahilya could barely comprehend it.

When they had left Irshar all those days ago, the ashram had spanned miles in the jungle, a flowing, beautiful city, with valleys, hills, orchards, and roads constructed with care and finesse—a refuge of civilization within the alien jungle. Now the city looked like a monstrous, leviathan creature frozen in pain.

At its center stood the vriksh, but its trunk loomed so wide that it blotted out anything beyond it. When Ahilya craned her neck, she could not see the canopy. She was certain they had been walking under the vriksh for a long time before reaching the city, for it rose hundreds of meters high, the darkness of its shelter absolute.

She could almost hear it speak. If she returned to the broken Etherium, perhaps its heavy breath-like susurration would echo in her ears, mingled with the trapped cries of the Virohi. Its roots rippled out, capturing buildings between them, each tendril taller than her, creating a maze of natural pathways. The city lay nestled within the vriksh’s embrace, licking its wounds.

Her fingers fumbling, Ahilya untied the rope from around her waist. Architects clustered around her, some collapsing wordlessly, others weeping in relief and horror as they noticed the city they’d returned to. Her instinct made her want to comfort them, but what could she say? Ahilya stumbled away from her expeditionary team, climbing down the hill, clambering over thick roots of the vriksh, dirt caking her palms, fibers tearing her clothes. She made for what she hoped was the direction of the council chambers, but all was dark, and the pale indigo of daylight was muted under the vriksh’s deep canopy.

A few lights burned here and there, visible to Ahilya between the thick roots. From the flickering glow, she could tell it was not sungineering but a primitive fire created with pieces of wood and flint. The deeper she went toward the center, the more recognizable the structures became. She walked past one of the schools, and a group of houses that were untouched by the devastation. She came across a residence raised unnaturally in the air, the roots of the vriksh spearing it, like fingers holding up a smashed toy. All was silent and dark within. Ahilya shuddered and kept moving, her only thought to find her sister and nephews. Footsteps thudded behind her, and she noticed that the others were following her. Chaiyya’s face was listless, but Eskayra looked mutinous, directing her expeditionary team to the infirmary when they came upon it.

By the time they reached the center of the plaza, only the three women remained. Ahilya paused, her eyes widening. Encrusted by deep boulders riven from the earth, the council chamber stood within the plaza, wrapped in a tangle of brown roots. Light shone through the windows fitfully, and the chamber was broken everywhere, foliage bursting through gaping holes. Still, miraculously it stood, and there was no mistaking the arched roof, which had somehow retained its shape. Followed by Eskayra and Chaiyya, Ahilya stumbled past debris and fallen walls into the chamber.

Inside it was no better. The chamber had been a long hall when they’d left, with offices for different councilors housed within it, but except for the round center table, little remained. Ash and dust lay thick in the air, and sounds of voices filtered toward Ahilya past her coughs.

She trudged further into the light. Shadows resolved into the shapes of councilors, in the middle of a conference, though the hour was early. Basav looked like he had been weeping. Airav’s wheelchair seemed broken, then hastily fixed. Garima and Weira were speaking in low, tense voices, and Kiana sat with a few sungineers Ahilya didn’t know.

Several chairs were unoccupied, the other councilors presumably roving through the city to see to the citizens. Ahilya heard snatches of conversation.

“…healing…”

“…injuries…”

“…must speak with him…”

Their mutters stopped as she approached. Silently, Ahilya righted an upturned chair and sat around the lopsided remains of the round council table. Chaiyya stumbled over to Airav, who took her hand in his. She pulled up a chair too, then leaned her head on his shoulder, tears leaking from her eyes. Someone asked Ahilya a question but she did not hear. She could only stare at where the roof that had caved in like a cascading wave.

A hand emerged from the rubble and her bile rose. She forced herself to remember it was just the cosmic creatures’ attempt at escape. That hand did not belong to a citizen, trapped in the architecture. She had stopped the destruction. She had saved humanity and the cosmic creatures. Right?

She could not fool herself. The damage to the ashram was as bad as in an earthrage. If her war with Iravan had levelled the jungle and created whole hills, it was a miracle Irshar had survived. Yet how many had died? Was Tariya all right? Were Arth and Kush? She wanted to ask about her sister, and about the rest of Irshar, but she was so tired. With a trembling hand, she reached for the bowl of nuts that was usually kept on the table, but of course, this time there was nothing here. Her stomach growled, her mind blurring.

“Ahilya-ve?”

Airav said.

She blinked.

They were all looking at her. Someone had spoken.

“We asked what happened,”

Airav said, not unkindly.

Ahilya tried to clear her head.

“My sister,”

she rasped.

“My family.”

“They are all right, Ahilya-ve,”

Airav said.

“By some miracle, they were unhurt though their neighbors were not so lucky.”

There was no accusation on his face, but the words hit Ahilya like a slap regardless. She knew it was not a miracle that Tariya and the boys had survived. The vriksh was encoded to Ahilya. It must have kept her sister safe because of Ahilya’s desire for her family’s safety. A part of her had known Tariya was all right, before Airav had confirmed it. This was exactly why so many of Nakshar’s citizens had survived—because of her buried intention.

But other citizens from other airborne ashrams… Ahilya’s mind conjured an image of a thousand airborne ashrams that had once existed. Inkrist, Carran, Erast—these had been cities that had once floated in different bands to Nakshar and her sister ashrams. But Iravan and Ahilya’s consideration had extended only to the Conclave, and in the end only the Conclave had survived. Now, of the Conclave… perhaps only citizens of Nakshar had survived, because in the end, that is where Ahilya’s memories lay. The bodies were undoubtedly cleared away in the days since the battle, but death had overtaken the rest of them once more. Ahilya had thought herself capable of extending compassion and care even to the Virohi who were so alien, but she had failed them all. She felt smothered by her shame. She could not hold Airav’s gaze. What have I done? She thought. What have I become?

Airav leaned forward.

“Ahilya-ve, will you tell us what happened in the jungle?”

Ahilya tried. Slowly, her voice hoarse, she explained what she had experienced with the cosmic creatures, the visions they had shown her, how she had failed in her desire and then fought with Iravan in a cosmic tug of war.

“The Moment—” she said.

The architects in the room flinched, but her eyes were for Basav, the seniormost of them all.

“I can still see it,”

he said, and his skin flickered blue-green.

“It is shattered. I can float in it, but all the stars are broken, and several of them are g-gone.”

He paused, his mouth trembling.

“I-it is as though glass has fractured, and I remain with the splinters. The only possibilities that are intact belong to the Garden, but it is only a matter of time before those crumble too.”

His eyes filled with tears, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Trajection is over. This is what one Ecstatic’s capital desire has wrought. Him and you—you stupid, selfish girl.”

Ahilya recoiled, and despite her grief Chaiyya flinched too, casting a disturbed look at Basav. By common understanding everyone had been polite to Ahilya—they’d had to be, she held their fates in the palm of her hand—but with the Moment gone, Basav’s last reserve had broken.

She wanted to defend herself. But how could she? A voice, her own, whispered in her head, You wanted this. When she had been a na?ve, lonely archeologist, she had looked for a different way of survival. She had thought that survival without trajection would allow for everyone to be equal. Now her desires had come true, yet humanity still only existed at the brink of survival.

“Perhaps it can be repaired,”

she said helplessly.

“If it isn’t completely gone—if you can still see it and feel it.”

“Not by us,”

Basav replied, wiping his eyes. He took a deep breath, then another, clearly fighting for control, and it was clear from the nods of the others that they’d already spoken of this.

“Only an immensely powerful Ecstatic Architect, could do it. One who was united with their yaksha counterpart. And it would have to be their deepest capital desire, one they could pour their whole will into.”

“So, Iravan then,” she said.

Who else was there? Irshar had only one Ecstatic Architect—Chaiyya. All the others had sworn to Iravan. And Chaiyya had not found her yaksha yet. As far as Ahilya knew, no one else except Iravan had managed that.

“Does it need to be repaired?”

Eskayra spoke.

All of them turned to the doorway where Eskayra stood, leaning against the frame, her arms crossed over her chest. Ahilya had forgotten that her friend had followed her, but Eskayra gave her a small smile and walked over to stand next to her.

Ahilya expected Basav to tell Eskayra to get out, or to demand to know what she was doing here—she was no part of the council—but he knew her power and popularity.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“The Moment,”

Eskayra repeated pointedly.

“Does it need to be repaired at all? It is only an architect’s reality. It has always been invisible and inaccessible to us complete beings. Why must we waste time repairing it?”

“The Moment is our most sacred place,”

Basav said coldly.

“Without it, we cannot traject. We cannot do anything at all. With it gone, architects have no purpose.”

“Yes, the architects.”

Eskayra sneered.

“But there are more of us than there are you, and we have purpose. We can help you redefine who you are.”

“We know many architects follow you, but—”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing here?”

Eskayra demanded of the room at large, turning away from Basav.

“The cities we are trying to build, the future we are hoping to have—I thought we all agreed that, unlike flying ashrams, we were finally going to make something that was not dependent on trajection. That trajection was weak and dying and unsustainable. Believe me, it gives me no pleasure in defending him, but that man in his Garden has done us a favor. He has taken away the temptation to keep using this power. Or has everything just been lip service for you people?”

The chamber erupted into cries and snarls. Ahilya’s head began to pound. She needed to eat. She could not take another altercation.

“What Iravan-ve has done is an abomination—”

Basav said, rising out of his chair, tears still glittering in his eyes.

“The Moment was sacrosanct,”

Weira said.

“—you would not understand, a non-architect—”

“—a place to see consciousness—”

But Eskayra remained unperturbed and contemptuous. Watching her, Ahilya felt a kinship. Her friend’s words and attitude were not far from what she herself would have said, once upon a time.

“The power was already dying,”

Eskayra said, interrupting the cacophony.

“But now our sungineers can actually try to invent something new. You cannot see it now, because you have lost something precious, but this is an opportunity. Is that not right, Kiana?”

The once-Senior Sungineer of Nakshar blinked, her mouth thinning.

“That puts a lot of pressure on the sungineers, Eskayra. We are struggling, especially after everything that has happened in the last few days.”

“Yes, but now with Irshar finally safe—”

“Irshar is not safe,”

Basav began.

“Ahilya said the cosmic creatures have been removed from Irshar’s architecture,”

Eskayra countered.

“It will no longer morph arbitrarily. Wasn’t that the whole reason we were looking to make cities? But we no longer have that threat to Irshar, to humanity. We need to recover, certainly, and this grotesquerie is a reminder of what we have endured, but our city doesn’t need to be pretty. It needs to be functional, and we can stay here for years, for decades, while our sungineering evolves and finds a way, before we need to make new cities. My team will no longer have to work with the pressure of survival breathing down their necks. And Ahilya will not have to fight the Virohi to make them stay within the city.”

“Do you think yourself so unaffected?”

Basav sneered.

“I cannot speak for your builders but complete beings in the ashram have fared no better than architects after this calamity. Many have experienced debilitating migraines, others have difficulty breathing, and still others have such trouble with their vision that they cannot see their hand in front of their faces. It is all the result of the Moment breaking, and the infirmary is full, with no real help available because everyone suffers to some degree. The only reason we here have escaped it is because of our training through the years to manage disaster.”

He gestured with a head toward where Kiana sat.

“Ask her how she feels. It is her store of medicines that keeps her functioning now.”

Eskayra glanced at Kiana, but then her eyes flashed to Ahilya, as if looking for a way to dispute Basav. Both of them could remember the journey back to the ashram, and how non-architects had fared.

Ahilya stayed silent. Perhaps in a different time, before Oam’s death, before her councillorship in Nakshar, she could have supported Eskayra. But she had seen the similarity of different identities too closely. Her allegiance, such as it was, no longer encompassed only non-architects. This is why we could never have been together, she thought. We are too similar. Iravan, with his architect sensibilities had been an opposite, completing Ahilya in ways Esk couldn’t.

Eskayra’s face registered mild disappointment.

“These effects on non-architects are sure to dissipate,”

she muttered.

“Even if the Moment’s destruction affected them, Kiana—and I—are proof that we will recover. Distribute the medicines, and after recovery, the rest of us complete beings will build something anew for all of us.”

“And what happens when the medicines run out?”

Basav replied scornfully.

“We have been dependent on trajection for more than a thousand years. Landing in the jungle has not changed that. How will we make medicines if we cannot traject the few seeds we have left from the crash? Where will we get food? We have terrible injuries among us, which we cannot heal without trajection. We will starve before the year is over, if we aren’t all wiped out by disease. Without the Moment, we have no technology, and while I applaud your dream for the sungineers, they have not been able to invent an alternative to trajection when we had all our resources and were flying in the skies. Now when we have nothing?”

He shook his head, and his gaze took them all in.

“We are dead people walking. These two have doomed us.”

Another silence greeted his words, this one heavier. Eskayra opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, frowning. Kiana stirred, and one of the other sungineers made to speak, but Ahilya noticed Kiana’s imperceptible shake of the head.

Eskayra was speaking thoughts she herself had thought once upon a time, the very thing she still thought in her heart of hearts, but to hear from Basav how impossible the dream had been…

“So, once again, our only solution is to change his mind?”

Eskayra said, making a disgusted sound in her throat.

“We make ourselves hostage to his whims again? Haven’t we learned anything? We’ve sent emissaries to the Garden, and invited him to treat with us. We asked for his sungineers. What has any of that achieved? He told us he will refuse to help us build anything as long as we harbor the Virohi, and whether in the vriksh or in the architecture, the Virohi are still here among us. He is not going to help us—if he were going to, he would be here already. He is probably out there celebrating the Moment shattering.”

Was he? Ahilya thought. His shock still rippled in her. Whatever else he had meant to do, Iravan had not wanted to destroy the Moment. But Eskayra was not wrong, and Basav was nodding too.

“You should have let Iravan-ve destroy them,”

he said, his eyes flat on Ahilya.

“You have been trying to save that man, but there is nothing left of him to save. He has long since died and now you have doomed us all with your desperate desire to retrieve your husband.”

Ahilya’s shame caught in her throat like a sharp bone. She could say nothing to refute him.

Basav had never seen Iravan as a man, only known him as an Ecstatic, a monster, a rabid creature that had to be feared, controlled and eventually, put down. But as her eyes moved over the rest of the council, Chaiyya, Airav and Kiana averted their gazes too. Eskayra frowned as though unsure what to think, and Weira and Garima looked disturbed. All of them agreed with Basav’s estimation to some degree. She should have forsaken Iravan.

In her guilt and shame, she had seen all of their points of view, even agreed with them, but it hit her now how separate she and Iravan had always been. Why it had been fine for them to let her suffer alone with the weight of the cosmic creatures, and sacrifice Iravan. For all that she and her husband had been trying to save everyone, their own destruction had always been acceptable, because that was the easiest and the best solution.

Her mind spun, and she saw Iravan on one side, her on the other—except the image shifted and they stood together, the world opposing them. She did not know if this was her thought or another corruption of the Virohi. The cosmic creatures had been trapped by the vriksh, but they were still a part of her as much as she was of them. They had given too much of themselves to each other. Eskayra looked at her with concern, reaching over a hand, but Ahilya pulled away. The other woman flinched, hurt on her face.

Eskayra turned back to the councilors.

“How long until we run out of resources?”

“We’re still assessing,”

Kiana replied, shuffling some papers in front of her.

“Sungineering is dead though, so it will take time to know the full effects of this.”

“Nothing we do will make a difference,”

Basav said.

“Only they can do something.”

He gestured limply between Ahilya and toward the Garden, to where Iravan was.

Eskayra glanced at Ahilya, but her words were for the room.

“If we tell him all this, will he help?”

“Will he?”

Airav said skeptically.

“He wants to destroy the Virohi, and an Ecstatic Architect’s capital desire cannot be changed this easily. You said it yourself—he hasn’t helped us though we are the last survivors of humanity. He wants to make amends but he wants to make it on his terms. I don’t believe that Iravan can breathe anymore, unless it is in service to his capital desire. It controls him now, more than he knows.”

A wave of loneliness washed over Ahilya. She had never felt so far away and so close to her husband before. Wasn’t this exactly how she felt about the cosmic creatures, and why she couldn’t trust herself.

“The Virohi aren’t a threat anymore,”

she mumbled.

“Attacking them now would be akin to attacking innocents.”

“They broke planets once. They are not blameless. The way you talk of them…”

Basav turned away, disgust all over his face.

His revulsion poured off him in waves, and for an instant, Ahilya could see how abhorrent it was for him to work with her. That he had not defected to the Garden was a miracle—but then again, what was his choice? She and Iravan had taken it away from all these people. Either her folly or Iravan’s; either this perverted form of an ashram or the company of Ecstatics. Those were the only options left to humanity’s survivors.

She saw this realization on everyone’s faces in a way she had not seen before. No wonder they wished for new cities so desperately. Not just for humanity to endure, but for all of them to no longer be prisoner to two tyrants. It would be best for them if Iravan and Ahilya were dead, but that freedom was not theirs either.

Something within her broke at this realization. How terrible it must be to be trapped within someone else’s delusion. She sympathized with them. She was them, caught in her mind and that of the Virohi. Was Basav wrong at all?

“Speak plainly,”

she said softly, her gaze roving over the others.

“You want me to extract the Virohi from the tree, don’t you? You want me to turn them over to him. Let him commit genocide, now when it is not necessary anymore. Is that it?”

“It would prove your allegiance,”

Basav said softly, his eyes glittering in the candlelight.

“And your sanity.”

None of the others refuted him, but Ahilya saw her desperation reflected in them. These were architects. They had grown up revering life and consciousness—all life and consciousness. In their hidden histories, architects had only stopped the Virohi from breaking the world. What Iravan was planning was beyond anything anyone had ever done.

Chaiyya trembled—she who had always been the healer, who despite her call to allow genocide of the creatures knew how wrong it was. Kiana’s mouth was pursed—the sungineer who had been the only one so long ago to question the ethics of draining a yaksha for its Ecstatic energy, when Nakshar stood on the brink of destruction.

But what place did ethics have when they were contemplating the end of everything? What place did morals? The two women avoided Ahilya’s eyes. Only Eskayra watched her impassively, and her voice echoed in Ahilya’s ears. Would it be so bad?

Abruptly, Ahilya stood up. She swayed on her feet, but her hands clutched the table.

“If this is what the ashram needs,”

she said tightly.

“then I will speak with Iravan.”

Eskayra moved closer.

“Now? Ahilya, you’re exhausted.”

“You heard what Basav said. We have no time. I’m going to the Garden.”

“Then I will come with you.”

“No.”

Ahilya tried to make her voice gentle, but it cracked under the strain.

“You heard Basav. This is between me and Iravan. It is not war he wants, nor destroying the Virohi. I know what he is after and I will give it to him.”

“And what is that, Ahilya-ve?”

Airav asked warily.

The chamber swam in front of her eyes, the broken promises, the phantom emotions, the heartbreaking echo of Iravan’s voice, asking her to let him go.

Ahilya gritted her teeth.

“Erasure.”