Page 31 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

IRAVAN

How are constellation lines created?”

Iravan asked.

Around him, the Ecstatics of the Garden shuffled. They were back in the main assembly chamber, though this time none of the sungineers were present. Dhruv had taken nearly all of them to Irshar to keep Iravan’s promises. Only a few remained here to maintain the technology for the Garden, and they kept to their solar lab, away from the Ecstatics. Iravan did not bother them. He’d never claimed authority over them.

He stood in the center with the only people he commanded. The Ecstatics collected in a circle around him, deathly still, watching him intently. No one was trajecting, and hardly anyone glowed, away from the Deepness as they were. Not wanting to involve sungineers here, or waste any energy, Iravan had eschewed the use of glowglobes in this chamber. His skin provided the only light, ricochetting off blue-green phosphorescence, gleaming on his blade pendant, reflecting off the pools of water.

It was enough light to see the expressions of all the other Ecstatics. Hostility dripped from the gathering, in the cold stances, the suppressed murmurs, the raised eyebrows. Iravan had still not released the rogue Ecstatics from their makeshift prisons, but already his architects who were in Irshar were living with their families. This hostility was to be expected—both for bowing down to Irshar, and for his refusal to let architects out of the Garden when they requested to do the same.

He had called this class to gain control, but only his closest contingent looked truly curious. Darsh studied the gathering, his arms crossed over his chest, as though unable to believe none of them knew the answer. Reyla frowned, moving closer to Naila, a questioning look in her face.

Naila sighed. In a sea of black uniforms, her white kurta shone with Iravan’s light. He did not expect her to participate, but perhaps the habit was too ingrained in her not to answer his questions.

“It’s a matter of will,”

she said, reluctantly. Her voice, though quiet, echoed around the chamber.

“One has to visualize them in one’s head, and it is actioned desire that manifests as constellation lines. Each line becomes stronger the more we impose our will on it, yet each line must be different and subtle, and an architect must be careful to choose the stars to create a particular effect. You can create a wall of jasmines by imposing your will on a blooming jasmine star and combining it with the possibility of a single jasmine growing on a wall. Or you can do so by stringing a bud with a different vine that already climbs the wall, performing a grafting. But the lines themselves are a persuasion, a seduction. Our wills cannot be forceful. We can damage a star, so we must be careful to give the star, the plant, the life and possibility, only as much as it needs and no more.”

“As much as it needs and no more,”

Iravan echoed, nodding. Naila had repeated almost word for word what he had taught in Nakshar’s Academy once. It was amazing she remembered it so clearly. He turned to Darsh.

“How is this different from Ecstasy?” he asked.

“It’s pure power,”

the boy replied.

“We don’t create constellation lines, but we force our will and we change the plant in some way.”

He relapsed into silence. More and more, Darsh concerned Iravan—with his moody silences and frequent frowns. Was it merely an effect of adolescence? Or was it Ecstasy, and everything their survival had become?

Iravan did not push. He simply nodded and did not correct Darsh’s answer.

In truth, there was more to it. Changing the nature of the plants did involve some measure of constellation lines. The force of desire during Ecstasy might present as a simple ray of light from the Deepness while performing Ecstatic trajection, but that force split within the Moment to become constellation lines. It was the difference between constructing the lines and having them be constructed for you, and Iravan had ridden the wave of pure power into constellation lines multiple times.

The Moment, the Deepness, even the Etherium were all intricately connected. But for most of these people, it was an academic question. What they knew of Ecstasy was taught by him. And today, he was holding this class for one reason.

“This,”

he said quietly.

“is the everpower.”

He flexed his fingers, and around him a maelstrom arose, one of dust, earth and wind. The air warped to create a rhythmic chiming, reminiscent of the bells within Nakshar’s temple—a sound he had not heard in months, but which was imprinted in his memory. The current lifted him up, his feather cloak billowing. He spun in a small circle, arms outstretched, and radiance burst from his skin, throwing shimmers of light across the dim chamber.

The Ecstatics had seen him do these feats before while he prepared for the war with the Virohi, but it seemed to finally hit them that he intended to teach them this, when he had been so guarded with his secrets before. Eyebrows shot up, and the muttering took on a new, excited flavor. Those who had been slouching suddenly straightened, their eyes bright as they tracked him. Iravan felt a surge of satisfaction.

He gently descended and let the everpower go. The audience settled, though eager eyes still watched him.

“Attempt to amalgamate your visions,”

he said to them.

“Your first vision, the Deepness, your Etherium. Try to imagine them as the same.”

The architects muttered, throwing each other confused glances.

“Like combining the Two Visions?”

someone asked in a loud whisper.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It is dangerous, but safety has never been an architect’s lot,”

Iravan replied coolly.

“Acknowledge they are the same and you have control. Desire it. I will intervene should anything go wrong.”

Around him, one by one Ecstatics started to glow as they entered the Deepness.

Some of them frowned, others closed their eyes.

Naila, of course, did not attempt anything.

He could see the question in her eyes, of what he thought he was doing, but it was imperative they learned this skill.

Everything that had happened—their entire future—hinged on this one thing.

In truth, holding this class at all infuriated him.

He never wanted to teach anyone the everpower, and he had been counting on fulfilling his capital desire without needing to.

Yet the events in the jungle had taught him a brutal humbling lesson.

There were forces that even he could not contend with.

He could not shake it, the battle within himself, that somehow he should have let Ahilya die when the planet attacked—and that was what scared him more than anything else.

That he could not trust his past lives and what they were telling him.

That he could not trust who he had become, who Ahilya had become, not when both of them were so corrupted in their own way. How ironic that after all this time his problems had remained the same.

Once he had been unable to tell right from wrong even as a Senior Architect, pressed by his promises to the council and his vows to his wife.

Then he’d had Bharavi to counsel him. Now?

Iravan gazed at the students.

Now, he supposed, he had these untrained Ecstatics.

If the temptation of everpower did not seduce them enough to stay with him, he did not know what would.

He began to stride through the gathering, noticing the stuttering blue-green tattoos on dark skin, as the others entered and left the Deepness in their attempt to combine their visions.

Eyes opened and closed in frustration, and people were muttering on the impossibility of his ask.

Iravan opened his mouth to call out another instruction, when movement at the doorway caught his eye.

Ahilya entered, her gaze finding him instantly with the light coming off him.

She did not speak, nor attempt to break into his mind, but he sealed his shield tight over his Etherium.

He could not bear it, he knew, seeing into her turmoil and memories.

Would it even be her? Or would he see some version of them? After the events five days ago, he had paced within his chamber, willing Ahilya to wake up and summon him to her Etherium.

He could still remember their phantom kiss—he’d indulged in a moment of weakness, knowing that she was corrupted by the Virohi—but if his goal was to separate her from the cosmic creatures, he could not allow her to infiltrate his mind again.

The more she resembled them, the more his capital desire would weaken, infected by her closeness to the Virohi.

It was enough that she was fine physically.

That was all he needed to know.

After that encounter in the vriksh, he had asked Dhruv to confirm that for him and shut his own Etherium down.

Yet looking at her now, Iravan was uncertain if the Senior Sungineer had been accurate in his report.

Dhruv’s assessment must have been hearsay, for Ahilya looked dead on her feet, her tired gaze sweeping over the gathering before she made her slow way to the platform.

A chair began growing there in anticipation of her, and this time she took it, nearly collapsing onto it.

Her skin looked ashy, and Iravan could tell even from here that she was having trouble breathing.

Heartache so strong seized him that his hands curled into fists.

He watched her close her eyes.

He tried to calm himself.

It was disconcerting how much he wanted to comfort her.

Was that a manipulation of the Virohi? Who would he be comforting, and would she allow him to? The fury climbed in him.

This is what he had done to her.

Him and the Virohi.

A thousand deaths would not be enough to atone.

Erasing them was only the beginning.

If he could, he would choose to do this again and again, not for any other crime, but the crime of what they had done to her.

He tried to still the anger coursing through him.

How would he go about purging the Virohi from her? For all he knew, the infection ran too deep, and there was so much he did not understand.

Her Etherium that she’d dragged him into, unlocking their ability to speak to each other in their minds.

The way the vriksh and the Virohi were connected.

That mysterious energy in Irshar’s solar lab that he was certain had to do with Ahilya in some capacity.

How strange that the only one capable of untangling these mysteries was at the center of it all.

He was an architect—he built.

But Ahilya was an archeologist, trained to see disparate pieces and make a cohesive narrative out of them.

If there was anyone that could provide an explanation, even the beginnings of one, it was her.

It was, after all, one of the things that had brought them together in their days of courting.

Would she be able to decode herself, while changes were occurring to her? The very thought of it spun his mind, like looking into an infinite mirror.

Others had noticed Ahilya.

Ecstatics began to shift on their feet, perhaps expecting another confrontation.

Iravan gestured to Reyla and Darsh to continue the class.

They were among the youngest here, but they were still the most experienced, now that both Pranav and Trisha were working with Dhruv.

Reyla was a natural Ecstatic.

She was the only one of them who had found the Deepness before finding the Moment.

She had taught him how to braid his power in the Deepness in different ways, a move essential to the first assault on the Virohi with the bomb.

He had already discussed the everpower with her, and how it could be similar to Ecstasy in some ways.

The two were equipped to carry on this class, breaking down the steps to achieve everpower, even if they themselves had not mastered the evervision yet.

Leaving the children, Iravan strode over to Ahilya on the platform.

Naila followed him, while someone brought them a bowl filled with ripe pears and apples, placing it on the table that had begun growing.

Ahilya acknowledged him with a nod.

She looked sorely like she needed to eat, but though the words were in his mouth, to ask her to partake, to feed her if he must, Iravan resisted the urge.

He sat across from her while Naila took the last chair.

On his wife’s face, Iravan read his own tiredness, and for an instant, he allowed them both to rest.

To stay with each other silently, just because they could.

Naila looked from him to Ahilya, then smiled.

“Well, this is cozy,”

she said, before helping herself to an apple. The sound of her crunching into it grated on Iravan, but Ahilya threw the Maze Architect a small, wan smile.

“How can I help you, councilor?”

he asked finally.

Ahilya’s eyes drifted back to the class where Reyla was speaking in her soft voice. She took in the Ecstatics, then focused on the roof. She seemed to be tracking the dust that swirled there constantly.

“What happened?”

she asked.

“Five days ago. That attack.”

“What do you think, Ahilya-ve?”

he answered carefully.

Ahilya’s gaze cut to Iravan.

“It’s the planet, isn’t it?”

Of course, she had worked it out. Why was he surprised? He nodded, once.

She leaned forward.

“Is that why you’re teaching them this everpower? Do you think they can help?”

The truth was that he didn’t know. He didn’t even know whether these Ecstatics could learn the everpower. That skill had come to him after trajecting all the core trees of the sister ashrams into submission while still in the skies. The act of simply thinking about his chair in the Garden while talking to Nakshar’s Ecstatics when they’d named Irshar, the way the Conclave had formed, the bridges he had constructed during the crash, the shape Irshar had settled into when it landed, all these things had occurred simply because he’d desired them—nay, barely imagined them. He had begun understanding the limitations and possibilities of the power after his subsummation of the falcon-yaksha, but it had begun with the core trees.

Or perhaps it began with his unity with the falcon. If so, he still had to decode the method. Everything he’d learned, he’d learned on his own. His first Ecstatic experiences had occurred before he’d known the falcon existed. His first attempts with the everpower had happened without clarity. All of those had been chaotic, out of his control, and he had learned true control only on uniting, then finally subsuming the yaksha. But if everything was really a slow slope of understanding, could he not accelerate it for these architects? He’d had to discover all this on his own, but he was here now, and he could give them shortcuts. What else was the point of so much knowledge and power? It all began with them first finding a way to amalgamate and view their three visions as one thing, even if they did so briefly.

Ahilya was gazing at him, her brow crinkled. Iravan could feel her attempt to break past his shield, to look into his mind to unravel all this.

“They can help,”

he said, an answer to her question.

“Why?”

she persisted.

“Because all your consciousnesses are connected? Or because you Ecstatics are connected in some special way?”

“Both,”

he muttered.

“In varying degrees.”

All Ecstatics had an affinity for each other, he had learned this much. Back in Nakshar, when the falcon had once tried to take him over, he had summoned a few Ecstatics to him without his knowledge. Consciousnesses were connected after all, this was the truth of their world—and if the Moment connected all architects in a way, then it stood to reason that the Deepness did the same for Ecstatics. If some Ecstatics had found the Deepness due to his desperation, then did it not make sense that he could bring them to the everpower in the same fashion? He was as desperate now as he had been during his fight with the falcon-yaksha, except this time he had control over his desperation. This class was an attempt to train them with restraint. He would much prefer to do it this way than have them find the power at a time when he could do little to direct it.

Ahilya watched him, waiting to see if he’d say more. Naila stopped eating, to look at him askance.

“For the love of survival,”

the Maze Architect murmured.

“would it kill you to give her a straight and full answer for once, sir?”

It was Ahilya who answered.

“He does not trust me. He does not trust how much of me is still me, and how much the Virohi.”

Naila quietened at that, and Ahilya looked away too, but Iravan could see in the trembling of her lips how much it had cost her to admit that. She did not blame him for his distrust, not this time. She was suffering the consequences of the Virohi too. Perhaps she had already lost herself. He alone knew the pain of that.

He did not realize what he was doing until she jerked back. His hand covered hers, squeezing it in comfort.

“I’m sorry,”

Iravan said quietly.

“I am not trying to be oblique. If I can answer something fully, I will. Please ask.”

Ahilya nodded and slipped her hand out of his grip. His palm curled ever so slightly as if to trap her touch in his.

“You wanted to know everything we discovered,”

she said.

“The Virohi are overwriting citizens and I have been told to destroy them for you.”

Iravan raised an eyebrow. He had predicted the contamination of Irshar’s society long ago. The overwriting did not surprise him, but Ahilya being here did.

“Then you finally see reason?”

he asked. An excited edge entered his voice. He leaned forward.

“Do you know how to destroy them?”

Her fingers circled the heartpoison bracelet around her wrist. Ahilya studied it for a long time, then looked up to meet his gaze.

“Do you have footage from Dhruv’s drones?”

she asked.

“From when the Virohi emerged out of Irshar?”

His excitement still skulked under his skin, but he tapped at his bead bracelets and entered the sequence to access those sungineering records. Holograms hovered over his wrist, showing the three of them the events from a few weeks ago. Irshar crumbling. The Virohi coming alive in strange shapes, pulling out of the architecture. The jungle motionless, then lurching with imminent storms. Ahilya made him pause the recording several times—to watch the Virohi lurking near the vriksh before they attacked Iravan, and then again to study the jungle which was quiescent for so long even though the cosmic creatures had emerged from Irshar.

Finally, she leaned back. She seemed relieved.

“What did you see, councilor?”

Iravan asked quietly.

Ahilya opened her eyes.

“We all saw the same thing,”

she said.

“The jungle was not under attack from the Virohi after they came alive. The cosmic creatures were just hovering by the core tree. They were confused.”

“But the jungle changed even if the drones didn’t record it,”

Naila said.

“Your expedition experienced it, didn’t it? Massive mountains forming, hills and trees levelled.”

“Yes. But all that occurred only after the Moment shattered. It was not an effect of the Virohi’s extraction. Not even the Virohi’s intent. The landscape changed because of what happened to the Moment.”

“And is that important?”

Iravan asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. It is.”

Ahilya met his gaze.

“I think there is a reason the Virohi began overwriting us. They were scared.”

“Of what?”

“The same thing you were. The immensity of our planet. I’ve never seen them like that. Desperate, angry, selfish, yes—but never terrified in this manner. There is more here, something that is forcing them to overwrite us, some kind of defense mechanism.”

Iravan studied her. She would say something like this, words of a corrupted mind, intent on saving the Virohi. But she was also simply Ahilya. Could he afford not to listen to her?

“Indulge me,”

she said softly, reading him, and Iravan cracked a smile. He gestured for her to proceed.

Ahilya took a deep breath.

“Through all the time that I have known them, the Virohi have wanted form,”

she said.

“They have wanted to be bound by physical law, in order to experience life in a way they have not done before. They escaped their home planet, which was on the brink of destruction, to evade erasure. I have come to know the cosmic creatures closely, and all along they have wished to find immortality and eternity, while needing to be bound physically. It is a contradiction, don’t you think? The cycle of birth and rebirth in our world gave them an opportunity to manifest such a contradictory desire when they found a kind of immortality in the architects and yakshas. Reincarnation allowed them to live forever. They found a way to endure, even if the act unleashed earthrages.”

“You paint a sympathetic picture of these creatures,”

Iravan said, frowning.

“But you cannot simply dismiss the earthrages as a side-effect. They might not have unleashed the rages immediately after their release from Irshar, but it was only a matter of time. They’ve already attempted to destroy our world, driven by their mad desire to seek form. We found sanctuary in the skies, but I have seen the manner in which they plundered other worlds. They destroyed everything there, and they would destroy us too.”

“Yes, but once they found our planet, they never again sought to go to those other planets,”

Ahilya said.

“Here, on our world, they found beings such as us who were complex consciousnesses. After all, humans existed long before trajection did. You and I saw that in the caves in the habitat long ago. Our planet perhaps was the only one they visited where life had evolved to host complex beings such as us—beings that could give them what they sought.”

Within Iravan’s Etherium, Nidhirv flashed for an instant. In that man’s time, the cosmic creatures had been invited to split. Nidhirv had been initiated as an architect in a ceremony where he had helped bring the Virohi into birth, creating the split of an architect and a yaksha. Earthrages in that time had been smaller things, more contained, and Ecstasy had been encouraged—as had been the unification with an architect’s yaksha. Vishwam had indicated that their world, their culture, was special—the final eventual home of the cosmic creatures. Everything Ahilya hypothesized corroborated Iravan’s knowledge. It made him uncomfortable, as if she were secretly trying to manipulate him.

“What is your point?” he asked.

“When you shattered the Moment, the cosmic creatures grew mad. I remember the way they screeched, and in the Etherium I saw them, weeping, grieving, always grieving. They attacked you in the skies not because you were trying to eliminate them, but because you shattered the Moment.”

“You’re saying they care about the Moment?”

Iravan asked skeptically.

“They have destroyed the Moment—they ripped it apart each time they attempted to take birth in our world. They infiltrated it to infect the architects.”

“If you choose to look at it that way, yes, they did destroy the Moment. But in another way, the Moment has always been their home, their plane of existence. Earthrages occurred from the very beginning because the Virohi—this alien species—tried to embed themselves into the planet through the Moment. The cosmic creatures are formless beings, but in the Moment they found a kind of form. Trajection came to our species because of their activity in the Moment, and you and I could only trap the Virohi in the Moment. It all revolves around that dimension. Of course, they care.”

Iravan said nothing, but he could not deny the sense in her words. He himself had seen the form of the Virohi in the Moment, not just when he and Ahilya had trapped one creature, but afterward, when he had wrenched the entire hive through the Conduit to explode them with his sungineering bomb. Outside the Moment, the Virohi had looked like snaky, sinuous smoke, but within the Moment, he had seen their stars.

Shaped like rocks that melted into moisture, or like orbs that shifted with a thousand fires, the Virohi’s stars had looked like no other possibility Iravan had ever encountered. It was as if even the Moment with its infinity could not truly contain their shape. Architects presented as dust motes, but true creatures of infinity like the Virohi… of course, they had found some kind of a home in the Moment. This is how they must have always existed. Iravan had been unable to see them that way before the eversion, but once Nidhirv had seen the Virohi in such a form, bringing their consciousness into life as an architect during a birthing ceremony.

Naila’s brows arched in understanding.

“If they care about the Moment… Then you think the overwriting was triggered because the Moment was destroyed?”

Ahilya turned to her.

“I think the destruction of the Moment is connected to the overwriting, yes. And I think if we neglect to address this larger reason—whatever it may be—then we will be inviting a bigger problem.”

Still, Iravan said nothing. Everything Ahilya said indicated a corrupted mind, hell bent on defending the pestilence of the cosmic creatures, but he had visited the core tree in the dead of the night several times in an attempt to understand how to extract the Virohi. He had felt the Virohi’s grief, seeping through the tree. Ahilya’s council did not understand it—and Iravan was not about to explain it to them—but had she not embedded the Virohi in the tree, the cosmic creatures would have destroyed him and the planet in their madness, before being destroyed themselves. Without the Moment, they would never be able to find any kind of form. The planet would have ruptured slowly but surely, and the Virohi would have diminished too, decaying until they were no more—unable to escape to another dimension, unable to rebirth, trapped on this plane.

Ahilya had saved them all. She would not take credit for it, he knew; he had seen the way her own council constrained her, and how she seemed to allow it. But even if what she said about the Virohi’s intentions was true, it still did not change the threat.

“I am grateful for what you did for me,”

he said.

“But none of this changes the corruption we face due to the Virohi’s actions. Now that the Virohi are in the tree, they cannot escape it. Your council is not wrong—no matter what they are escaping, the cosmic creatures will defile us. This is the prime opportunity to destroy them and be done with them. You should listen to your council.”

“I think they’re mistaken,”

Ahilya said flatly.

“Iravan, think of what happened immediately after the Moment shattered. It wasn’t simply another earthrage beginning. This was a total reconstruction of the planet in a way, a distortion. Hills appearing out of nowhere, chasms opening, trees growing against nature’s laws. This was not just something occurring on the surface of the earth, or in the skies like a skyrage. This was overarching, comprehensive. A level of storm we have not seen before, occurring from deep within the planet’s bowels. A reckoning, seeping into the very elements of air and water, metal and soil, changing all rules and coming at us from the very core What would you even call something like that?”

“Planetrage,”

Naila said quietly. Her eyes were wide.

“Yes,”

Ahilya said, turning to her, relief on her face that someone had understood her.

“That’s exactly right.”

Planetrage, Iravan repeated in his mind.

It was a good term for it, for what else could describe the way the earth had rioted. The way in which air had become vacuum, and dust had turned into icicles, and boulders and rocks had tried to harm him. Ahilya was speaking of the time when the Moment had shattered and the planetrage had first roared, but the planetrage five days ago had been triggered by him. He had manipulated the jungle with his everpower, attempting to grow food for the ashram, find the yakshas, create a home for the small creatures. All those things were accumulations, one thing piled on top of the other, his every use of the everpower a distortion of the planet. The will of the planet was to remain a certain way, but with the everpower he trajected it to become something else.

The consequences of his fight with the planet were the same as an earthrage created by a Virohi’s split. Perhaps the Virohi had seen it coming. Perhaps they knew this would be a consequence. What the cosmic creatures had done to the planet by splitting themselves was trajection too, perhaps with an ancient and inscrutable form of the everpower. The earthrages weren’t caused by the split. They were caused by the Virohi’s forced investiture into the planet, while the planet defended itself.

Trajection, Ecstasy, and everpower—each of those destroyed the planet in a similar way, all of them a disease. Iravan had been hoping to teach his Ecstatics the everpower, but if Ahilya was right—and she was—then any use of it would simply magnify another planetrage. Within trajection, after all, lay the seed of its demise. No matter what he did, he was doomed to fail.

I cannot escape it, he thought numbly, his head spinning. I will forever be my own enemy. Doomed to destroy, never to build. How ironic he had once been an architect.

He had always meant to annihilate the Virohi, but what he needed to do was destroy himself. Every trace of this awful power, sooner or later, removed. Every part of him reduced into nothing.

“I think the planetrage is the greater threat, Iravan,”

Ahilya said, into his silence.

“We need to focus on ending that. When the Moment shattered, the planetrage started, and we experienced it again five days ago. But all of these were just the first tremors—which flattened the land already, killed hundreds of people. Next time it could be worse. Whether or not you destroy the Virohi, the planetrage will continue until you reconstruct the Moment. We will all be gone.”

Her voice grew quiet, insistent, and she reached forward to take his hand, her fingers fluttering over his heartpoison bracelet.

“You are the only one who can repair the Moment,”

she said softly.

“If you found a way to stop this greater threat, would that not be making greater amends?”

There it was, always the thing that separated them. Her desire to save those creatures. Not the planet, not humanity, but for some reason, the cosmic creatures.

Iravan snapped back into himself as if he had been struck.

He stood up, wrenching his hand back.

“You are trying to manipulate me,”

he said coldly.

Ahilya stood up too, slowly.

“Iravan, no,”

she said.

“I’m really not.”

“No?”

he sneered.

“What am I to conclude from this? You want me to spare the Virohi, against your own council’s wish. You want me distracted, repairing the Moment now when you don’t need to hold me to this anymore.”

His fingers circled the dark bracelet, and he snapped it into two. It had been useless to contain him anyway, when he was above those ailments. He had been wearing it as a courtesy, a promise given, but he had already fulfilled his promise.

“I have given aid to you,”

he said.

“Medicines, food, technology, that is why you needed the Moment repaired. You know that you have no more hold over me, and this is why you come, making arguments about newer threats. You have the means to destroy the Virohi but you don’t want to use it. You think you can sway me with your arguments, but I can see how well you’ve thought them out, wanting me to follow along. Do you take me for a fool, Ahilya?”

“In many ways, yes,”

she replied evenly, but there was no heat in her voice.

“But you have acted with reason before, Iravan, though I could not agree with you. Listen to me now. I am not lying about any of this.”

“You are trying to change my capital desire,”

he said.

“This is what you have been attempting to do from the very start. That’s why you had me make the heartpoison bracelets in the first place. Deny it and be a liar.”

“Am I changing it?”

she challenged.

“Or am I clarifying it? Iravan, do you want to destroy the Virohi, or make amends? You are conflating the two, and therein is the root of your problem. That is the only thing I am trying to affect—the only thing I have from the start.”

The words were so close to the disturbing thoughts Iravan had about his conflict with material bonds that his suspicion grew tenfold.

“My capital desire is for me to decide,”

he spat.

“If the planetrage is so dangerous, then destroy the Virohi like your council desires you to. Give them to me, and let me destroy them, if the thought makes you so queasy. I will help you with this planetrage after we’ve done this. And that will be my making of amends.”

“It will be too late then,”

she said.

“You saw how the planetrage affected you, and if you are injured in your ridiculous battle with the Virohi, then it will be all for nothing. You almost died already when the Virohi attacked you after you bombed them, and—”

Sudden sounds of commotion rose, drowning out the rest of what she was saying. The three of them whipped around to face the class they had all but forgotten. Somewhere, Reyla was shouting, and Naila wore the same grim expression from the fight between Darsh and Kush, as though preparing to break up another altercation.

Then Reyla’s words grew clearer.

“No,”

the little girl was shrieking.

“No—that’s not—you shouldn’t—What are you doing?”

Iravan saw his confusion and alarm on his wife’s face, and then they were both running behind Naila, pushing through the crowd. Iravan stopped, blinded momentarily. Light flooded his vision. He could barely discern the shape, but it appeared like a slim, spiraling vortex. Ahilya clutched his arm; only she touched him this way.

The both of them recognized what it meant. They’d seen it before, the only two here who had ever seen something like this before.

This was a vortex of unification.

Someone was uniting with their yaksha.