Page 4 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

AHILYA

The sun had set by the time Chaiyya arrived.

The Senior Architect appeared in a rustle of leaves, brushing twigs off her hair and clothes as she entered the clearing the builders had made.

Her dark skin shone with the light of trajection, but though Chaiyya was now an Ecstatic, she still worked only in the Moment.

Ahilya knew Chaiyya had never been curious about Ecstasy, and her encounter with Deepness had been unnatural.

Chaiyya smiled tightly at Ahilya as she picked her way through Eskayra’s team toward her.

Two other healers accompanied her, Kamala and Meena, both of them non-architect nurses.

They had both been studying the mind, a nascent field in the airborne ashrams, at least with non-architects as the mind had always been the purview of consciousness-experts like Iravan.

Now, when people couldn’t trust architects, when Irshar barely had any left, these nurses had become more important than ever, helping people with their grief and loss.

Kamala and Meena were specifically assigned to Ahilya, assisting Chaiyya in guiding her through the interaction with the Virohi.

While Meena went to work on arranging a delicate medical instrument, Kamala greeted Ahilya with a nod.

A young woman, perhaps Naila’s age, her long angular face cut by apple-cheeks, and a certain cold wariness in her eyes, Kamala had once belonged to Nakshar.

She had perhaps known Oam who had been a nurse studying the mind.

If he were alive, Ahilya’s case would have been handled by him, but perhaps if he was here, Ahilya wouldn’t have found herself in this situation.

It was such a circular thought that Ahilya choked, unable to follow it.

Under Chaiyya’s supervision, the two nurses began to sort the medical instruments, uncoiling thin glass tubes, and tinkling sungineering equipment.

Chaiyya trajected the seeds around her wrists and neck to power the equipment but, if the slow blinks on the devices were any indication, she was having trouble in the jungle, just like the team of Eskayra’s architects.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to return to Irshar, but all they had were bad choices.

Ahilya suppressed a wince as Kamala inserted an intravenous line, strapping a few bands around Ahilya’s wrists and chest to read her vitals.

Another line infused saline and herbal medicine directly into Ahilya’s bloodstream.

A surge of clarity rushed through her, and the jungle became brighter, more present.

Chaiyya and the others sharpened, as her own Etherium receded.

Ahilya breathed a sigh of relief.

Encounters with the Virohi always fatigued her.

This was why for the past three days, she had been instructed by Irshar’s council not to attempt the persuasion, no matter the call from the Virohi.

To do so without her team of healers was practically suicidal—not just for her but for all of Irshar.

It had not always been this way, of course.

In the early days after the Conclave had crashed, Ahilya had entered the Etherium to conduct the persuasion easily, following her instincts.

The Virohi had appeared as smoky forms then.

Ahilya spent hours in the mirrored chambers, showing them a life in the ashram, conjuring images of her sister Tariya and her nephews, Arth and Kush, feeding Virohi parts of her memory.

Laughter and love, pain and joy, grief and regret—she gave the Virohi everything.

They listened at first.

She thought that would be the extent of her interaction with them.

But then the shivering had started, followed by incessant vomiting.

Once Ahilya had fainted in the middle of the persuasion, and Irshar had wobbled, buildings crashing, people trapped and injured and dead, all while she lay unconscious.

It was sheer luck that the Virohi did not escape then.

Nearly twenty people had been buried in the wreckage.

The council agreed Ahilya’s loss of control was unacceptable, and all of them imagined it was the stress finally manifesting in her.

But the diagnoses didn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary—nothing that other non-architects were not experiencing.

Then Chaiyya began using methods usually reserved for architects.

They’d realized then how Ahilya had become more like an architect with her awareness of her Etherium.

In treating with the cosmic creatures so intimately, in offering them her consciousness as meat and fodder, Ahilya had gone too deep.

She had given unknowingly, and they had taken, and taken, and taken.

The medical devices began to whirr and beep.

The two nurses moved away, monitoring Ahilya’s progress on their beads.

Chaiyya stepped in their place, kneeling in front of Ahilya.

She withdrew a slim retinoscope and shone it into Ahilya’s right eye.

Ahilya remembered how she herself had used such an implement on the elephant-yaksha on another expedition.

“Did you practice?”

the Senior Architect asked, peering into the lens then switching it to the other eye.

“Unsuccessfully,”

Ahilya muttered.

Chaiyya drew back, returning the lens back into her pouch.

“These practices have worked on the most recalcitrant of architects, but you have to believe in them working. That is key.”

“I don’t doubt them.”

“Then what? You doubt yourself? Us?”

Ahilya stilled at that and Chaiyya’s face drew into a frown, and the woman sighed.

“You don’t believe that you can count on us,”

she said flatly.

“I do,”

Ahilya replied automatically, but she could hear the lie in her voice.

Once, Chaiyya had thanked her, said that she’d saved everyone’s lives—but that was before they’d understood the full extent of what Ahilya had done.

When the architecture started shifting again, becoming more and more unstable, Chaiyya and the rest of Irshar’s council had begun to fear Ahilya.

They began to treat her differently after that.

Part hate, part fear, part abject pity—the people who were her friends became her hostages and her tormentors.

They were walking a tightrope—keeping her sane enough to commune with the Virohi, yet knowing that each communication only corrupted her further.

Even their speech to her was more careful than ever, as though anything they said would push her over the edge.

How could one count on people like that?

“Have you considered that this was never meant for me?”

Ahilya mumbled.

“These powers, these experiences, they were always the province of the architects.”

“It doesn’t matter if you are a non-architect,”

Chaiyya said, but a tone of distress entered her voice.

“These practices are foolproof. They are meant to anchor you into yourself. The architects would once use them in order to enter the Moment, but my adaptations consider that you are a complete being. You have to trust that.”

Ahilya’s mouth twisted. Surely Chaiyya did not really believe her own words? How could one be a complete being, and split at the same time?

Either Ahilya was becoming like the architects—lost to herself beyond her imagining—or she was a complete being, her consciousness unmolested.

She could not be both at the same time, and after her encounters with the Virohi, she knew which one she veered toward.

I have become what I’ve always hated and desired, she thought.

An architect, a tyrant, a monster. In her mind, the Virohi whispered for her to join them again.

“I trust that you’re trying to help me,”

she said, but she left her true feelings unsaid—that none of this would make a difference, not in the way Chaiyya expected.

Intentions aside, the architect’s knowledge was theoretical.

Chaiyya had never entered the Etherium.

She had not spoken with the Virohi.

She did not know the danger, the lure, the sheer power of the cosmic creatures to obliterate any defense Ahilya built against them.

Chaiyya could not comprehend what Ahilya contested with each time she went to persuade the Virohi.

These exercises would never work for her.

What architect had seen the mind of the Virohi? Even Iravan had not; he had only jumped to conclusions about the creatures, driven by his hate for them.

Ahilya couldn’t help her streak of resentment—for Chaiyya, Iravan, for the rest of Irshar, and mostly for herself, knowing she had no right to feel this way, not when she received a perverse delight in speaking to the Virohi, not when she had brought them all to this destiny.

She gestured at the builders and the other members of the expedition.

“Do you think this place will work?”

she asked, changing the subject.

From her expression, Ahilya knew Chaiyya was not about to let her deflect that easily, but before she could say anything, Eskayra spoke.

“It is holding for now,”

Eskayra said.

She marched over from where she was standing and pointed at the image on her solarnote.

Diagrams glittered there, of low-lying buildings shaped like nests, and shelters imitating rocks.

Roofs used the existing canopy of the jungle, and vines were tied to weight-supporting pillars.

There was something almost architect-like about it, and indeed the architects on Eskayra’s team had their heads bent together as they trajected precious seeds to form the foundations of the structures on the solarnote tablet.

Yet this construction was different too.

Grubby hands, mud beneath nails, faces streaked with dirt… Architects once used sophisticated methods, but this was earthier, laborious, more alive.

Eskayra was using her own style here, one that equated non-architect methods with trajection.

Already the beginnings of an outpost were visible in the construction.

Chaiyya made an approving sound, but Ahilya watched Eskayra silently.

Long ago when they had courted in Nakshar, Eskayra had been resentful of the architects because her talent in building had been considered useless.

It was why she had left for another ashram on the same travel route which had brought Iravan to Nakshar.

Their faces wove in and out of Ahilya’s head, Iravan and Eskayra shifting one into another.

Eskayra was streaked with mud, brushing her hair back with an impatient gesture and smearing her cheek with more dirt.

Iravan’s tattoos glittered in Ahilya’s mind, his pristine architect uniform from the past, and his suave, careless handsomeness.

Ahilya nearly opened her Etherium again to watch him, needing him to reassure her that she’d made the best choice in marrying him.

She forced herself to notice the details of what Eskayra had done instead, the way she used fire to melt glass and supplement the construction, the way non-architects carried axes and machetes, tools that architects had never used.

Sweat dripped down the builders’ skin—so different to a time when architects had trajected whole ashrams from the cool comfort of an Architects’ Disc.

She had to take comfort from this change.

Believe that humanity was building something better.

“Maybe the Virohi led us right, after all,”

Ahilya said softly.

“Maybe,”

Esk said, though she sounded skeptical.

“All this could still break apart, though. Last time, the second we started building the constructions began to misbehave, and the jungle started to attack us. If Airav is right, and the jungle has retained a memory of destruction, then all our attempts here are doomed, and—No,”

Eskayra called out to a builder.

“Not like that!”

She marched over to correct them, leaving Ahilya.

Eskayra had disdained a councilor’s position in Irshar—and never fought for one in her airborne ashram—but she was a natural leader.

How would Ahilya’s life have been different if Eskayra had never left? Ahilya had never harbored the same strength of passion for Eskayra as she had for Iravan.

For better or worse, she had found her reflection in him, but would time and proximity with Eskayra have changed a lukewarm feeling of fondness into deep love?

, the Virohi sang, and Iravan shone in her mind, callously brilliant.

A stab of pain went through her, at the unknown possibilities of lost chances.

“Your blood pressure is rising very quickly,”

Meena said from her devices.

Chaiyya frowned.

“What is it? What are you thinking of?”

“The Virohi,”

she said.

“They called again. I need to confront them now. There is no more waiting.”

“Then let’s practice,”

Chaiyya said.

Ahilya tried to clear her mind as she had been taught.

The mirrored chambers beckoned to her, and she conjured the strongest picture of herself—a necessary exercise before talking to the Virohi.

She saw an archeologist laughing with Dhruv as they planned to become councilors.

But the image darkened, and Dhruv said to her, You two deserve each other.

She saw a wife, throwing the wedding garland over her husband’s neck.

But Iravan smiled at her, a dark cutting smile.

You will find me a difficult enemy.

Tariya flashed in her mind, memories of growing up together—but they had not spoken in months, and the very thought of her sister was a knife to the heart.

Ahilya gasped, wrapping her arms around her, staring at the jungle floor, breathing hard.

Chaiyya dropped to her knees. Her concerned face swam in Ahilya’s vision.

“What happened?”

“T-too much,”

Ahilya stuttered. Her entire body was cold. She couldn’t stop shivering. Where was her cloak? Chaiyya was still looking at her, waiting for an explanation and Ahilya tried to contain the stutter in her voice.

“Everything we’ve lost,”

she said.

“Everything—all the people—I have lost…”

“But those you’ve gained too,”

the architect said softly.

“Focus on us, Ahilya. On me and Airav and Eskayra and Naila and all those who stand behind you.”

“Because you have no choice,”

Ahilya said.

“Because I have forced you to.”

A range of emotions passed over Chaiyya’s face, from resentment to anger to sadness, but she did not deny it.

Ahilya waited for Chaiyya’s censure, almost wished for it—would it not be better to confront her failure, rather than tiptoe around it simply because she was unwell?

Simply because she held their survival in her hands? But all she had were these vague hints of her friends’ true feelings, these imagined vapors of hate and terror.

At least Iravan’s anger was honest.

The others thought so little of her, expecting her to be fragile, her mind ready to break at the slightest instance.

They had stripped her of her dignity with this treatment, and in the end she was alone.

“Your blood pressure,”

Meena squeaked.

“Ahilya-ve, it is out of control.”

Chaiyya’s eyes grew wide in alarm. “Stop,”

she said.

“Stop, Ahilya, whatever you’re thinking, stop.”

In her mind, the Virohi laughed, and she heard Iravan say, They will corrupt you.

“Say the words,”

Chaiyya commanded.

“Ahilya, say the words out loud.”

“I feel foolish.”

“Do it anyway.”

Ahilya raised her eyes to Chaiyya.

“Architects really did this in their training?”

“Young ones and even Maze Architects.”

Chaiyya’s face grew earnest.

“I myself have done this when my Two Visions have merged accidentally. Ahilya, I do this everyday since Iravan jerked me into the Deepness against my will.”

The words should have been comforting, but implicit in them was an undercurrent that Ahilya still cared to compare herself to the architects.

She had been envious of them once, and now that she was like one, her body was weakening and her mind shattering.

They had always been the source of her inferiority, but worse, she finally understood them—and by extension, everything Iravan had endured—now when she was so removed from him.

She was trying to hold onto any familiarity in this alien terrain, and architects and trajection and their history were her history too, no matter how much she’d fought it.

For so long those things had given her identity as they had Iravan, and it was such a twisted realization, so full of contradiction—

“Ahilya?”

Chaiyya asked, her voice heavy with worry.

Ahilya watched the rising terror and alarm on Chaiyya’s face.

“I am an archeologist of Irshar,”

she said mechanically.

“I am a non-architect, a complete being. I am a councilor. There are other councilors too. We work together to ensure survival. I am not alone.”

She breathed deeply.

“My name is Ahilya, and I am not alone.”

Chaiyya nodded in approval, and opened her mouth to speak, but a series of soft sounds emerged from her beads—

a signal from other councilors in Irshar that the deterioration of the ashram was beginning. Ahilya saw her own anxiety in Chaiyya.

“We can wait a few more minutes, if you need time,”

Chaiyya offered.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,”

Ahilya said. Besides, she could sense the agitation of the Virohi.

Chaiyya did not protest. She simply stepped back, joining the nurses in order to monitor Ahilya’s vitals.

The Etherium beckoned. A great sense of inevitability filled Ahilya. She closed her eyes and entered the mirrored chambers.