Page 17 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

IRAVAN

The bodies were shrouded in black.

The Junior Ecstatic, Shayla, uncovered them one by one, and Iravan gazed upon the faces of the architects who had been in the Deepness with him, his first line of defense, the ones who had needed his protection the most.

Shobha had been from Auresh, with such a quick wit that it had made Iravan chuckle. Aachal had been serious, one of the first to come to Irshar; they had come to Iravan’s aid long ago when he had fought the falcon-yaksha in Nakshar’s sanctum. Uma had been one of the most promising Ecstatics he had ever worked with; she had discovered the method to combine and tighten Ecstatics’ bonds that had been instrumental in the recent battle.

Iravan forced himself to remember the architects for who they had been, not the mere bodies they were now.

“We are still assessing casualties,”

Shayla said softly.

“There might be more dead.”

Next to Iravan, Dhruv shifted on his feet and adjusted his glasses. His face was grim.

The Senior Ecstatics following Iravan exchanged uncomfortable glances. The original four—Pranav, Trisha, Darsh, and Reyla—said nothing, but Kamal, Nagesh, and Mukthi muttered nonsensical words of sympathy and despair.

They were the most skilled in Ecstasy. Their loyalty was unquestioned; they had come to Iravan first and stayed with him through the last few months of upheaval. They had been his generals, and commanded the power of the other Ecstatics to feed it to him. Other Senior Ecstatics, Jyaishna, Theria, Vineet, had trained with Iravan only after landing, but these ones he had known when Nakshar was in the skies.

He could feel their confusion now. How could this have happened? They had followed his commands. Iravan-ve knew what he was doing. Didn’t he?

These trusted architects of his retinue were little more than children. Darsh and Reyla were children at fifteen and ten. The only one who had ever been in a true position of power was Manav, once a Senior Architect of Nakshar. The man stood with them now, his eyes vacant, staring into the distance, his fingers playing with the edges of his kurta.

All of them had accompanied Iravan to the medical ward of the Garden. Iravan’s home had escaped the physical devastation of the battle with the Virohi. Compared to what Iravan had seen of the ashram from the skies, it was almost obscene how untouched the Garden was.

Keeping true to the design of the Garden, the medical ward was built like an enclosed terrace, with several wild copses growing in clusters, benches rising out of fragrant wood, and streams running haphazardly through the growth. Healbranch grew in profusion, along with mediweed and yararoot and amelaus. Individual chambers were partitioned with trellises, but the effect was still of a wild forest made partially tame.

It was nothing like a sanctum, yet it reminded Iravan of an ashram—neither Nakshar nor Yeikshar, the two ashrams he had lived in, but of Uparesh, a skyborne city that had long been subsumed more than a hundred years ago. An image flashed in his head, laughing with his friends as he performed shift-duty in Uparesh’s sanctum, while he tended the plants with his bare hands, a practice long gone out of fashion, but one that had persisted in Bhaskar’s time. The Garden had taken shape out of Iravan’s memory, except it wasn’t truly his memory, but one belonging to his past life. He shook the memory away.

Shobha, Aachal, and Uma had been popular. They had been teaching the others. They had been part of this fledgling community that the Garden was building. Mutters and whispers came to him like a breeze through the leaves. The chamber was full of architects who were in the battle with him, and those who came to pay respect to the dead. All of them sounded disgruntled, and quietly frightened.

Hostility reverberated through the gathering, and Iravan slouched, the way Bhaskar would when trying to hide his overly tall frame; he shifted into Mohini’s frown, his face scrunching. With an effort, he banished his past lives.

“The Ecstatics were arranged to fight in the same chamber,”

he said.

“What do you mean there might be more? How do you not know who is dead, and who is not?”

Shayla fidgeted nervously.

“Aachal succumbed to their injuries only a few minutes ago. They seemed fine, but then death took them. I believe it was delayed shock, Iravan-ve. The shock of whatever happened.”

The shock of the shattering Moment, Iravan thought.

Or perhaps they had finally seen, finally felt, the cosmic creatures.

Had they all seen what they were up against? The battle was confused in his mind. Iravan could not remember if the Ecstatics had disappeared from the Deepness before or after the Virohi had attacked. The Virohi’s consciousness no longer blinked in the Moment attempting to anchor, as if Ahilya had taken them from the broken realm and restored them fully by wrapping them in Irshar’s core tree. But even if the Ecstatics did not see the Virohi in their second vision, they must have seen the creatures in their first vision. A feeling of wretchedness climbed over him, terror and amazement in equal parts, making his palms sweat.

He could not fully remember what had happened, only that Ahilya had somehow intervened and the cosmic creatures had retreated to where he could not follow. If he could only feel them in the Moment again, perhaps he could find a way to destroy them, but how was he to fulfill his capital desire now? It burned in him. He could almost feel it sloughing off of his flesh, as if by taking stock now he was only delaying acting against the creatures. Had Ahilya made it back to the ashram safely? His feet fidgeted, wanting to go to Irshar, but though he thought it, his body froze, reading his intent.

Ahilya’s survival meant little to his capital desire. To his past lives, she was the clear enemy—not only one who had thwarted his attempt to wreak vengeance on the Virohi at every turn, but one who had taken the Virohi to a refuge he could not follow at all. He tried battling his body, tried to make it swerve toward Irshar to check on his wife, but he knew that unless his actions served the destruction of Virohi, he could not act at all—not without fighting the will of the many inside him. And the flight over the jungle, searching for her, had already shown him how difficult that was. He had not been able to rescue her then. He would not be able to reach for her now.

Iravan stared at the dead laid in front of him. His body was not the only one which was failing to follow a command. Ecstatics healed, that much was known. How much damage had these three sustained that their bodies had not instantly recovered? These limits he pushed himself and the others beyond… how would he be able to conquer them? We deserve to be punished, Bhaskar whispered. We need to make amends.

“May you be reborn in better times,”

he murmured.

“May your desire be pure and just, and may you fulfill it to make amends.”

He willed it, and flowers bloomed on the grass. He picked up the three lush wreaths, placing one on each architect’s body. The flowers would remain fresh for days, he had used the everpower. This much at least he could do, before his desire waned.

Iravan looked up to see the mutters had stopped. An uncomfortable silence lingered, a dozen pairs of eyes on him. He met their gazes levelly.

He had added to the traditional epitaph with his wish for amends. Iravan had been blatant with his desire; these were Ecstatics he was dealing with, not mere architects. Once, he had been more discreet with his agenda, but those had been the games of a Senior Architect. Such a thing wasn’t necessary with Ecstatics.

Ecstasy was brute force, not a delicate maneuvering of constellation lines like trajection. The power changed the people using it. The everpower had changed him too: he had become more single-minded. But the falcon screamed in his head, and Mohini laughed, a tinkling sound, and Iravan grimaced, an action made by Nidhirv in the twist of his mouth, and thought, Can I really be single-minded when I have so many minds inside me?

“They have—had—family in Irshar,”

Shayla said.

“Inform them of this,”

Iravan replied.

“These three were Ecstatics of the Garden. They will be returned to the earth here. But their families can say goodbye and find closure for their grief.”

Shayla nodded and covered the bodies again.

“We have not communicated with the ashram yet,”

Dhruv pointed out softly.

“They will ask for aid. What is your decision regarding that?”

Iravan did not like this line of questioning. He knew he needed to send resources to Irshar—everything he did here in the Garden was to make amends to the complete beings of the ashram, and already so many had died there,

But he could feel the resistance the Ecstatics had to being answerable to the ashram they had escaped, especially when their own lay injured and dead. Iravan could not allow them to think that they were above the non-architects. If anything, he needed them to be subservient to the complete beings. He had not opened communication with the ashram before because he did not know how much the Virohi had infected the citizens through the architecture, but though that was no longer the concern, he had done nothing yet. Matters were shaky in the Garden. He had to find a politic way to help Irshar.

Without answering Dhruv, Iravan stepped away from the bodies and exited the medical ward, taking one of the many pathways that led around the Garden. Dhruv and some of the others followed him back to the main hall without a word.

Outside the ward, it was more obvious how the Garden had escaped the battle. Iravan had arrived to see that, apart from sungineering blinking out, the rest of the Garden functioned much like before, with hallways lined with plumeria-lined bushes and residences rising beyond the central courtyard. A massive central tower rose above the courtyard, standing on long tree-trunks and spearing into the sky. Iravan lived there alone, in his quarters on the topmost level away from the others, though one chamber in the tower was carved for Manav. From his vantage point earlier, he had seen the vriksh’s assault on the ashram, but the core tree did not encroach his space, though its canopy sheltered part of the Garden.

Perhaps the tree knew it was not welcome here. Unlike the ashram, the Garden had been built with Ecstasy, and Iravan had examined the shattered Moment, seen the stars of the Garden almost indecently untouched, while other possibilities crashed and crumbled. It was what he had been busy with, bolstering the Garden’s possibilities with everpower, while Dhruv undertook the Garden’s administration.

The Garden still bloomed, trees and hedges intact, and pathways crisscrossed like trails in a forest, some leading to the main attendance hall, others to the solar lab and the practice yard. It was a matter of time before those broke too, but for now, glowglobes glittered, hidden like stars among the foliage, whirrs and hums coming to him from behind dark passageways as sungineering began again, as if the calamity was but a small interruption.

Dhruv gestured at the glowglobes.

“We’ll need to build more medprobes. Those were destroyed in the explosion. We will have to divert from other inventions to do so.”

Iravan nodded but did not comment. Sungineering was Dhruv’s affair, as the Garden’s Senior Sungineer. Everything related to the technology went through him, and Iravan did not need to know the details. It was enough that things worked. After the battle, Iravan thought he had broken sungineering—and had scared him more than anything else—but on his return, he put his reserve Ecstatics to work and the devices had begun again. Now, Ecstatic Architects were in the solar lab, powering the Garden in a delicate, devious trajection.

The sungineers had come a long way in the last three months. Much had been damaged in the Conclave’s crash to the jungle, and the Garden’s sungineers had built all this with the materials Iravan had provided. Now the Garden flourished with the technology enough to rival any ashram of the sky.

He had been right to place his faith in them, in understanding that they were the future of humanity. Especially now with the Moment gone, the Moment gone—and a part of him gibbered in shock at that—with trajection effectively dead, there was no other way forward except sungineering. Everything in the Garden used Ecstatic energy, built on the model of an energex. It was something Irshar would never have.

Iravan picked up his pace, heading for the main hall.

Dhruv fell in beside him.

The sungineer’s voice dropped.

“The battery is long gone. We do not have the materials to make another one. We could trade with Irshar, but I don’t know if their battery has survived.”

“It doesn’t matter,”

Iravan said.

“We will need to think of another way.”

His plan had been dependent on the Virohi’s unfamiliarity and distaste for the Deepness, and the bomb’s all-consuming power. He had searched for the Virohi’s stars and trained himself to lure them into the Deepness, and it had taken the better part of three months simply to make that plan. With the Virohi embedded in Irshar, Iravan had known it was only a matter of time before Ahilya’s will failed. But now that they were in the vriksh… he could not even see them in the broken universe. They were out of his reach completely.

The tree would hold them far longer than the city could have, years upon years perhaps, outliving Ahilya. Iravan saw the way the tree expanded. He saw the roots plunging into the earth. The Virohi were safe, and he could not touch them. Could he perhaps train his Ecstatics in a way that their capital desires manifested as hate for the Virohi too? Perhaps they would find a way he could not.

It was a risky thought. He was already conditioning them to make amends, but if he changed that toward war, who knew how each architect would interpret it. War—despite the fact that he was pursuing it—would be disastrous if each Ecstatic desired it from the depths of their consciousness. Ahilya had told him about the bloodshed Ecstatics had once unleashed, when humanity had barely crawled back from the brink of extinction. Iravan had no memory of that time—perhaps his consciousness had been reborn after the war, his two lives falling on either side of the event, but he could well imagine it. With such hate, Ecstatics could break the world. There would be nothing remaining to make amends to.

The lack of answers frustrated him. Apart from not knowing a part of his own Ecstatic history, a part that could have helped him in his pursuit now in conditioning and taming the Ecstatics, it irked him that he did not know what happened to Ecstatics who had died in that war, their capital desires unfulfilled. Iravan had told Darsh that fulfilled Ecstatics, after achieving their capital desires, would return to the Virohi form in some way. What he hadn’t shared was how he feared unfulfilled Ecstatics returned to such a state too. In their last life, what else would happen to their consciousness? If this were true, he was doomed no matter what he did. I cannot go back to that, he thought. Never again to become something so filthy. All his knowledge, he could barely believe that he would still need to rely on obscure architect histories to tell him more.

Either that, he thought, or the skills of an archeologist.

Dhruv seemed to be following the same train of thought.

The sungineer’s voice dropped further.

“Did you find any yakshas in the jungle?”

Iravan did not reply.

He had not looked this time. He had wasted his time building and destroying a home that he would never have with Ahilya. And if he found the yakshas—what then? In conditioning the Ecstatics, he was already skirting the edge of morality to ensure they did not damage Irshar. Iravan himself was a prisoner to his capital desire, and he had once been a Senior Architect, with a Senior Architect’s discipline. How would these children react when their capital desires manifested? War aside, it would be calamitous for the world if there were united Ecstatics running amok, each with their capital desire building for lifetimes, ready to be released without any rationale or control. A race of super beings beholden to no law, no power, no ethics… He shuddered, contemplating it. Such a reality could not be allowed to happen. He had to control it.

His strides grew longer, fueled by his nervous energy. Dhruv glanced at him but said nothing, matching his pace. Behind them, the others hurried too, a retinue of the most powerful Ecstatics.

They entered the main hall, and it flickered in front of Iravan’s eyes, to appear as it had been when he had first made it. He could almost reach out and touch the memory: Ahilya sitting next to him on the stairs where now there was a heavy highbacked chair with carved armrests; a tapestry of dark damaged jasmine leaves draped on the wall, walkways sluiced with water where now a courtyard served as an assembly place for the Garden.

The architecture was different from only a few months before, but the ghost of the original design still lingered under the modifications, ready to become apparent if only it were acknowledged. Where Ecstatics would have loitered, either discussing plans for the battle, or comparing methods for supertrajection, they were now busy with repairing the architecture. Iravan and his retinue walked past torn earth, and upturned grass, to the chair on the platform.

Eschewing the chair, which he reserved for more formal audiences, Iravan took a seat on the stairs, and the others joined him. Darsh picked at the grass by his feet, his face expressionless. Trisha and Pranav exchanged one of their usual glances, laden with meaning and friendship. Reyla placed herself down serenely, saying nothing. Kamal, Nagesh, and Mukthi sat haphazardly around, taking seats where they could.

Dhruv alone chose to remain standing. The sungineer glanced at Manav, who had begun to wander, then raised his eyebrows at Iravan.

“Ahilya has trapped the Virohi in the vriksh,”

Iravan began tiredly.

“Anything I attempt to do to the Virohi now would damage the vriksh, and the core tree is a part of Irshar. I cannot perform such a direct act of war against the ashram. It will defeat any purpose of making amends to the complete ones. I’m open to suggestions.”

It was what had stopped him from initiating war with the Virohi until now. Iravan’s fist thumped on his knee, an action from Bhaskar within him. He regained control and smoothed his hand out, slowly, deliberately.

“You changed the permissions of the trees once,”

Kamal said.

“Couldn’t you do it again with everpower?”

Iravan had not tried to meddle with the vriksh using the everpower. The vriksh was an amalgamation of all the core trees of the landed Conclave, and when he had changed the permissions of the core trees before, he had done it using Ecstasy.

Even then, it had been tricky. He recalled laying back in a bed next to a sleeping Ahilya, while she recovered from losing their child. His grief and pain were still fresh, and inside him the falcon howled in agony. Iravan had changed the permissions of the core trees in his fury and vengeance, but had not expected the vriksh to form. What might the everpower do to Irshar if he meddled again? What if he accidentally destroyed the tree altogether? Now when it was rooted so deeply into the planet, such a thing could be calamitous. The truth was he did not know the limits and consequences of his power, and a part of him shirked from attempting too much.

“It’s a possibility,”

he began—but then paused, raising his head.

A commotion emerged from the corridor. There were no raised voices, no shouts, but strains of consternation, questions, and dismay.

The architects around him began to glow without being told. None of them were trajecting Ecstatically yet but somehow, to Iravan’s surprise, the architecture began to change. The grass grew lusher, the damage to the slender trees knitting. Along the walls, the dark leaves changed, almost as though it were a veristem garden blooming into a lie, except instead of those flowers, the walls bloomed with intoxicating jasmines.

Ahilya, Iravan thought.

His heart skipped a beat.

He had expected her to come.

He was surprised it had taken her so long.

How had she fared? Was she hurt? He had wanted to find out, but each time he had tried, Bhaskar or Agni or the falcon had gripped his mind until the intention passed. It meant something—this control of them over him, unto making his very body still. His past lives were telling him he could not succumb to the temptation of her material bond. Still, relief bloomed in him. She had come. She was all right. His hands shook with how much he had needed to know this.

Wearily, Iravan rose from the staircase and approached his chair. Though he did not command it, though he barely desired it, the rest of his council took their places as well. Dhruv stood by his right shoulder, crossing and uncrossing his arms nervously. The others arrayed themselves on Iravan’s left, their gazes watchful. Reyla and Darsh guided Manav to stand by them, and the excised architect met Iravan’s eyes, his stare startlingly astute for one second.

Black-uniformed Ecstatics began to pour into the hall, taking up room around the chamber. Nearly a thousand architects found their place, muttering and murmuring, filling up the space in a few minutes. A ripple of movement occurred between them and a lone figure strode in, her head held high, eyes trained forward, straight toward Iravan.

Ahilya had clearly just arrived from the jungle, despite the days that had passed since the battle. She no longer wore her expeditionary equipment, but she was dressed in a plain kurta, severely muddied and crumpled. Her hair was in disarray, curls falling loosely around her shoulders, dark eyes proud and angry. She looked tired, and determined, and utterly glorious.

Iravan stirred, his fingers dancing, an action from Mohini. He wanted badly to meet Ahilya halfway, to submit to her, to kiss her, be kissed by her, but she walked through the gathering Ecstatics with deep disdain.

Iravan flexed his hand, trying to stay present.

“Ahilya,”

he said, his voice carrying. “Welcome.”

She stopped in front of him.

Her gaze took in all of them, his council behind him, the muttering Ecstatics, the sungineers peppered here and there, the glass of their instruments glinting in the phosphorescence. Her eyes passed over the glowglobes, and her lips thinned.

Then she stared directly at Iravan.

He returned her look unflinchingly.

With a wave of his hand, Iravan drew her a chair next to him, the same one he had trajected when she had last visited him in the Garden. That time, he had only just subsumed the falcon-yaksha. The two of them had been alone, and the Moment had been unbroken. His trajection now was a waste of resources, taxing an already shattered Moment, but he would be damned if he treated her like an enemy. He could not afford to disdain Ahilya, not if he wanted them all to make amends. The rage grew in him suddenly, at how little he had achieved, at how little time he had. The falcon roared, and Agni shrieked, and Iravan clenched his teeth and tamped them all down.

Ahilya did not take the seat.

“You owe me a debt,”

she said, stonily.

The chamber grew silent, each person listening intently now that she had spoken.

Iravan sat down, and the chair he had created for her dissolved.

“You have suffered,”

he said quietly.

“Irshar needs help. This I already know.”

“Do not mistake me for a petitioner, Iravan. I am here to claim what is rightfully mine, what is rightfully ours in Irshar.”

“And what is that?”

“Our place in this world the way we see it, not the way you do with your desire for amends.”

The silence in the chamber grew tenser, a tautness to it like a vine stretched tight ready to snap.

Iravan felt Dhruv stir behind him.

Anger simmered within him, that Ahilya took no responsibility for her part in it, but he kept it contained. Whatever transpired in this conversation would affect the Ecstatics. He needed to sway them toward his capital desire, but he couldn’t afford to look weak, not when he had caused the death of their comrades and presented no yakshas to them.

“Your war with the Virohi has damaged Irshar,”

Ahilya said.

“Listen well to me, Iravan, for my demands are clear. You will help us remake the ashram. You will send your Ecstatics to help us with our designs, to repair our architecture, to grow food and medicines—and not just until Irshar comes back to where it was, but until I determine their service is over. You will do this not merely for Irshar, but for all the cities in the jungle that we are building. You will see this done, and done again, now and for the rest of your years. You will enter into a binding contract with me, as strong as an unbreakable healbranch vow, Iravan, and you will find a way to enforce it.”

There was another silence, a breath taken in and held.

Behind his veil of inscrutability, Iravan felt a rush of relief, relaxing his shoulders.

This was shockingly perfect. Ahilya had given him an easy way to mold the desires of the Ecstatics toward making reparations to the complete ones. Still, he leaned back and steepled his fingers.

“Is that all?”

he asked, injecting irony into his voice.

“You exact a heavy price.”

“I am not done,”

she snapped.

“You will also send your sungineers to make our equipment work, to help with our inventions, and to make us independent of you and the Garden. This, you owe us.”

Dhruv shifted behind Iravan, and he imagined the sungineer open his mouth to speak, but Iravan raised his hand and Dhruv subsided.

Iravan knew what his objection was going to be.

All the architects of the Garden were Ecstatics now, even if they had not come to him so. Iravan had wrenched them into the Deepness through the Conduit in an unnatural awakening. Ecstatics usually supertrajected into the Moment, but the devices of the Garden were working because Iravan had taught his most reliable architects to traject into a dark, velvety Deepness the way the falcon had once shown him.

They were trajecting into other worlds though none of them could see those other worlds. Such knowledge was potentially disastrous. It was what the cosmic creatures had done—affecting worlds that were not theirs. Iravan still did not fully know the effect of such a trajection, and only the most critical sungineering was being powered right now.

Ahilya was right in that he owed her a debt. But giving her this would take a heavy toll, one he still could not calculate.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Ahilya bolstered herself visibly, and her eyes bored into his.

“You will repair the Moment,”

she said, and at that, Iravan finally exhaled.

There it was.

Her real demand.

He met her gaze. “No.”

“You will repair the Moment, Iravan,”

Ahilya said furiously, taking a step forward.

“And you will do so personally. No one else has that power, and it was your capital desire that wrought this.”

“Why would I want to?”

he asked.

“Why would you want me to? Do you, of all people, want the world to be dependent on trajection again?”

“You don’t need to know my reasons. You will need to see this done. You owe me this. I saved you from the cosmic creatures.”

For a second, Iravan did not say anything. The hall was so quiet that he might have been able to hear a leaf growing.

“And what about what you owe me?”

he asked quietly at last.

She had been prepared for the question, he saw. Ahilya’s jaw tightened, and she said.

“Make your demands.”

“You know my demands,”

he answered.

“All architects belong to the Garden. We will help you remake your ashram, we’ll even help you make your jungle cities. You have no need for architects—you have nothing to traject anymore. They belong with me.”

“No,”

Ahilya said, crossing her arms.

“I told you I will not force anyone to leave Irshar just so you can fulfill your mission to destroy them. I will not separate families.”

“Then we have no bargain.”

“What if I offer you something else in return?”

“This is what I want—”

“The Virohi,”

she said.

“Access to them.”

And Iravan paused.

Color heightened Ahilya’s cheeks. Her fingers crept to hold herself closer.

For the first time since she had come to the Garden, her lips trembled in uncertainty. She was afraid of what he wanted to do to the Virohi. Because of how she saw them as herself? It terrified him, what she had become, and how she could still remain the same.

Iravan pressed his hands together, an action that was wholly his for once. He wanted very badly to soothe away the wrinkle on her mouth, to comfort her, and it was unnerving how much he wanted to reach out. His past lives retreated, became quiescent, and watchful, waiting to see what he would do. What was this hold she had over him?

He took a deep breath to clear his head, and with a rush, Nidhirv, Mohini, Bhaskar, Agni and the rest returned to him, crowding his mind.

“How do you intend to do that?” he asked.

“That is not your—”

“It is my affair,”

and this time it was he who snapped.

“Do not expect me to take you at your word, Ahilya, especially if you do not intend to take me at mine.”

Ahilya glanced at the surrounding Ecstatics and seemed to come to a decision.

“You saw what I did,”

she said.

“The Virohi are contained by the vriksh, but I believe I can reverse my action with the core tree. It will take time, but I think it is possible. And I will release the tree’s hold on them for you.”

“To do as I want with them?”

A dozen expressions flew over Ahilya’s face, anger, fear, worry, shame. Iravan forced himself not to react as she closed her eyes in obvious pain. “Yes,”

she whispered.

Iravan leaned forward again, staring at her.

“Why would you do that? Do you no longer think it is genocide?”

Her eyes flew open.

“Would you agree to any other terms?”

Slowly, Iravan shook his head.

“I will need all information about the Virohi that you have,”

he said.

“Not just access to them, but anything in the architect histories. I know there are people in Irshar, Basav, Garima, others—they will need to give us those records. As will you—anything you discover through archeology.”

Ahilya nodded tightly.

“Should you learn how to destroy the Virohi,”

Iravan went on.

“you will give me that information as well. Our contract is for everything, including news you deem dangerous.”

Once again, she nodded curtly.

The assistance of the Ecstatics was easy. He had planned to do that once he found a way, regardless of Ahilya’s demands. The assistance from the sungineers was harder—but something that he and Dhruv would figure out somehow.

But the Moment…

Even if he’d wanted to repair it, could it be done at all?

He knew that he couldn’t simply will the universe to return into existence. There was a hierarchy to what he could do with his will alone, and the changes he made with the everpower did not endure too long. Nothing endured long unless it was tied to his capital desire, and the voices of Nidhirv, Askavetra, Rajesh, and Mohini reared back at him, to destroy the Virohi. They had waited for so long.

Iravan saw a thousand pairs of eyes watching him. Ahilya stared at him, her chin lifted slightly.

“Kamal,”

he called out.

“Nagesh. You are to go with Ahilya-ve and assess the damage to Irshar. Make a detailed account of what the ashram needs, and what the Garden can provide.”

The two architects stepped down from the platform and flanked Ahilya. She didn’t bother to look at them. Her eyes were only for Iravan.

He inclined his head.

“It appears we have an agreement.”

“Then enforce it,”

Ahilya said.

“How?”

he questioned.

“A healbranch vow will have no effect, not when there is no Nakshar and no rudra tree.”

“Yet the principle stands,”

Ahilya retorted.

“Make a bracelet that will poison the wearer should the vow be broken.”

Iravan cocked an eyebrow.

“I am an Ecstatic. I am more than an Ecstatic. I will heal.”

“But I will not,”

Ahilya said.

Shock ran through him, and for a second, he remained utterly still.

No, he thought immediately. He could not allow her to do that. He knew what she was asking—he could not harm her, not a complete being, not the complete being. Ahilya, who had ended an earthrage, who had supported the architects, and told them the truth about themselves. He could not harm her, not Ahilya. It would eviscerate him. If anything happened to her, because of him and his actions—he had wanted to rescue her, not destroy her—

The others were watching.

She had planned this. She had come prepared.

He had no choice. If he did not agree, the Ecstatics of his own Garden would know him for a hypocrite. They would never follow him to their destinies of making amends to the complete ones. They would never hold themselves accountable to complete citizens if he did not show that he was willing to be accountable to Ahilya.

She alone had ever been able to maneuver him without trying.

Slowly, without dropping his gaze from hers, Iravan trajected using the everpower.

Two dark heartpoison vines grew from the floor, curling in his hands, their surfaces smooth and shiny. The vines formed into bracelets, and Iravan spoke, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I vow to fulfill our contract to the best of my ability, Ahilya, if you fulfill yours. Let this heartpoison incapacitate the wearer if either of us breaks our vow.”

The vines glinted in his hands and solidified.

Iravan held up the dark bracelets for everyone to see, and heard the collective sigh that went through the gathering. Heartpoison was so toxic that a single thorn from it could fell the strongest person in seconds. A bracelet like this could fell a yaksha.

Iravan wore one, then climbed down the platform. He extended his hand, and Ahilya stretched hers.

Her fingers were cool against his skin. They trembled once, then stilled. She gave no other sign of her fear.

Very gently, Iravan slipped the other bracelet onto her wrist.

For a second, they stood there, their hands entwined. He could feel her pulse under his wrist. He could feel her heart beating inside his chest.

Then, Ahilya stepped back and pulled her arm away.

“I expect to see resources pouring into Irshar immediately after the assessment,”

she said.

“I will be waiting to hear from you.”

“As will I,”

he countered.

With a tight nod, and a final glance at everyone, Ahilya turned around. The Ecstatics surged around her, muttering as some of them followed her out, while others lingered, waiting for Iravan’s order.

Dhruv stepped up next to Iravan. His voice was very quiet.

“What do we do?” he asked.

Iravan studied the Ecstatics. Remembered the hostility he had felt.

“We do exactly what we promised her,”

he said grimly.

“And we find a way to finish the Virohi.”