Page 40 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

AHILYA

Ahilya kept her eyes trained on the ceiling of the assembly hall.

Despite the thrashing it had taken from Iravan and Darsh’s combined powers, it was reknitting, though not in any manner she had seen before. This was the same cascading whirlpool of silvery dust that had begun before Iravan and Darsh had started to duel, and it was evolving. It was like neither the weaving of plants or roots, nor the layered construction of stone or rock. It wasn’t the manner in which the Virohi had changed Irshar’s architecture, nor the undulating effect of everdust which made one’s eyes hurt. This resembled the slowest, most hesitant kind of construction. At the edges of it, Ahilya could see simply light, like dancing spots across her irises. The spots flickered and disappeared, coming together only to come apart again.

It reminded her eerily of how the everdust had been so long ago, when she had first entered this habitat in pursuit of Iravan after his abduction by the falcon-yaksha. Back then, the dust had been sentient, waiting for her to think something, responding to her like an affectionate pet. Even now the shimmering was cautious, as if this dust was weighing the lives it was surrounded with, changing itself and the architecture, yet doing so without startling anyone. Ahilya had been watching it for longer than an hour, ever since Iravan had disappeared. Perhaps she was the only one watching; if so, she could see clearly, the silvery light intersecting and crisscrossing, air made solid, as it rebuilt the roof without ceremony.

Vaguely, she was aware that the assembly hall had become even more chaotic after Iravan’s departure. The army of Ecstatics had left, the architects leaning on each other as they retreated, presumably to get more healing. Someone had alerted the sungineers, and orange-clad people hummed everywhere, talking to each other, rushing around carrying medprobes, seeking counsel from each other and Irshar’s own sungineers. Ahilya had caught a glimpse of a harried-looking Dhruv bursting into the hall, calling out orders, before he’d been swept away from her view. There were other citizens of Irshar here too, normal citizens who milled about, staring at the hall having never visited the Garden before. Several Ecstatic children who had been cleared away by Naila had returned. They were crying, leaning on their families arrived from the ashram. Ahilya caught a few adults quietly weeping too.

Kamala had come to see her only a few minutes ago. The nurse had led her away from the activity to a quiet corner, and checked Ahilya’s vitals. She’d given her a curious look, then left without comment. Ahilya supposed that was a good thing. What more could be happening to her, anyway? She had suffered the Virohi, suffered the vriksh, even suffered the Etherium. She answered Kamala’s cursory questions, then lapsed into silence.

Naila sat with her, making quiet sounds of frustration, her fingers entwined with beads, old ones of an airborne ashram. They did not look like rudra beads, so perhaps they belonged to another city. If Ahilya wanted to know, all she’d have to do was focus on Naila and the woman’s memory would come to her, but she was damned if she denied her that consent. Here in this moment, the Maze Architect was her only ally.

Naila hadn’t moved from her spot, keeping close to Ahilya ever since they’d claimed this corner of the Garden for themselves. Each time someone came to speak to Ahilya, she’d fended them off. Ahilya saw past Naila to the weeping people. An urge took her to rise and comfort them, to speak with them and allay any fear. For reasons she could not fathom, she felt responsible for this situation—and their grief and confusion bloomed in her mind as if the emotions were her own. She thought again of what Basav had told her, and the manner in which she’d seen into Irshar’s councilors’ minds. It’s beginning, she thought in a kind of distant horror. The Virohi are overwriting the others, and that’s why I can sense them so keenly. Her body shivered and a soft whimper escaped her.

“Try and rest, Ahilya-ve,”

Naila murmured without looking up, still unentangling the knots on her beads.

“There is only so much quiet they will allow you. Try to silence your worries.”

Her advice sounded similar to Chaiyya’s usual instruction before talking to the Virohi, but of course, Naila would know those basic practices. Perhaps she’d taught them once at Nakshar’s Academy.

Ahilya looked away, back to the shimmering ceiling, trying to obey.

In the forest of her Etherium, she hunted for Iravan. The vriksh had settled again, once more curling softly around her as she strode through the forest. Between her brows, she could sense her husband, but he felt fuzzy, as though he were a great distance away. His shields were back up, but in her mind’s eye she could still see his haunted face. She could hear his wretched sounds of despair. Darsh’s body fell over and over again, an image caught on loop. Try as she might, she could not rid herself of the image.

All of them knew the horror of what Iravan had done. Did they know what she had done? The afternoon was already blurry, shapes and shadows twisting and losing themselves in the caverns of her mind, but Ahilya knew one thing with certainty. She had found the Ecstatics of the Garden within the Etherium. She had pulled them to her as if she were a powerful magnet. Then she had controlled them—forced them to create a shield against Darsh, then commanded them to resist, to fight. She had imposed her desire onto them.

She had overwritten them.

She felt cold, and blindly she reached for the blanket Kamala had left for her. The ceiling. That was where she needed to focus. Look at it, she thought, trembling. Isn’t it fascinating. It is so fascinating.

It was no use. A horrible understanding was pouring into her. Airav had told her that she was the necessary obstacle between the Virohi and the rest of humanity. If you give in or give up, the Virohi will convert us to what they wish. But what did the Virohi wish except for form? And whose form were they most familiar with? Ahilya reached and gripped Naila’s hand without seeing. In the process of overwriting, the Virohi were blending the barrier of consciousness, giving Ahilya unfettered access to the others. They saw Ahilya as one of them. Perhaps she was the gateway they needed, to infiltrate the others. In controlling the Ecstatics during Iravan’s battle with Darsh, she’d simply given the cosmic creatures more access, accelerating the process of overwriting.

Basav’s voice mocked her in her memory, Do the right thing, Ahilya-ve. She had been trying to, but she had committed as gross a violation as Iravan had. What he had done with Darsh was visible, but her manipulation? She felt ashamed of its secrecy, as if she had done something dirty in saving the Ecstatics. Had Iravan felt similarly? Had he struggled with these feelings too, in trying to do something he felt was right? In a strange way, Ahilya finally understood her husband, now when she did not know where he was.

Naila squeezed her fingers and gave her a gentle nudge. Ahilya glanced to where the architect gestured. The Senior Sungineer of the Garden marched toward them, a grim look in his eyes.

Dhruv stopped a few feet away and glared at Ahilya.

“We need to ask you something. Come with me.”

He was looming. He knew how much Ahilya hated that. She turned back to study the ceiling instead of meeting his gaze.

“You don’t need me for everything,”

she muttered.

“It turns out we do for—”

“For fuck’s sake,”

Ahilya said quietly.

“Do something yourselves, the lot of you.”

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Dhruv raise his brows. A spasm of guilt rushed through Ahilya. She was not fending him off just to be difficult. She was afraid she couldn’t trust herself right now. What if she inadvertently tried to overwrite them again? Yet she knew they couldn’t do several things without her. To refuse their summons was another aggression, throwing their helplessness in their faces. She stood up, sighing. Naila rose beside her, and Dhruv glanced between the two of them, then shrugged. He began to walk away, expecting them to follow.

Naila grinned.

“You’ve become a bit too patient lately,”

she said softly.

“I like seeing you angry, again. It feels like you.”

The statement was meant to reassure Ahilya, a reminder that Naila was still here, that she’d been there at the start of this calamity and chosen to see Ahilya through all her different evolutions. But it was Ahilya’s anger that had set them all on this path. Her rage and Iravan’s arrogance. Silently, she followed Dhruv down a leafy pathway, and around a corner within the courtyard of the assembly chamber.

She staggered to a stop, her jaw falling open.

The main courtyard still resembled the one Iravan had created so long ago, with meandering narrow roads bordered with flower-lined bushes and hidden alcoves. This was where Iravan had created his throne room, the same place where she had come to make her demands and where he had conducted his class of Ecstatics before the battle with Darsh. The cave mouth leading to Irshar had been an opening in the rock—but now—now—Ahilya clutched at Naila to keep her balance.

It was not the hills of no man’s land she saw in front of her, separating the Garden from Irshar.

She saw Irshar.

The cave mouth simply opened into what looked like a wall of the infirmary, where a few feet from her the nurses of the city bustled about going in and out of patient rooms as always. Was she imagining it? But no, Dhruv was striding straight into the cave mouth, entering Irshar, and as she followed, she saw dust swirling everywhere reshaping the architecture.

Ahilya wanted to ask Dhruv what had occurred, but there was hostility in every line of his posture. She knew he had come to her against his wont. She, Dhruv and Naila passed chamber upon chamber in silence, stepping over the roots of the vriksh that had expanded into the Garden—if this place could be called the Garden anymore. Ahilya tried to make sense of it—this merging that was occurring so silently, but she couldn’t fathom it. Was this because of the battle with Darsh? She had noticed this dust before Darsh had exploded with light.

They came upon a chamber full of black-clad Ecstatics. Several lay on the floor, while others watched over them, the nurses of Irshar administering medicines. The Ecstatics all seemed comatose, and Ahilya saw their glassy eyes, their mouths hanging open. A shiver went through her. Dhruv made an impatient sound in his throat, and Naila tugged her gently. Ahilya followed them around a corner and outside the infirmary.

The rest of Irshar had not escaped this strange transformation. Ordinarily, the infirmary would lead into the main quadrangle with the vriksh. Now, though the vriksh remained, the plaza was heavy with blooms of jasmine from Iravan’s assembly hall. More pieces of the Garden were scattered everywhere—the dense solar lab caught between two residences of Irshar, and Iravan’s massive tower sprouting out of a nameless courtyard, surrounded by low lying buildings of the ashram.

Dhruv disappeared behind a large ixora bush, and Ahilya and Naila followed. Naila uttered a low, awed whistle through her teeth as they entered a chamber made almost entirely of bio-nodes, those massive sungineering devices which resembled solarnotes. The outside of these bio-nodes resembled pale frosted glass, but as Ahilya took a vacant seat, she saw images flicker all around her on the true screens of the devices. This was not a solar lab. It was something else—a solarchamber.

The others stopped murmuring when she entered. A small rectangular wooden table had been brought into this solarchamber, and Dhruv sat at one of the heads of it, leaving space for Ahilya at the other. Chaiyya, Airav, Basav and Kiana were all present as main councilors from Irshar, sitting on one side of Ahilya, where Naila took the only remaining seat. On the other side were representatives from the Garden. Two Ecstatics, Pranav and Trisha, and one other woman, her smile not quite reaching her eyes, who introduced herself as Dhruv’s lead sungineer, Purva. Ahilya studied them all.

“I don’t know where he is,”

she said before they could ask.

“I can’t sense him.”

Dhruv scowled at her from the other side.

“Iravan, what he has done—what has happened to the Ecstatics, and now what is occurring all over—”

He cut off, visibly trying to keep himself under control.

Ahilya was surprised at this subtle castigation of her husband, but it made sense. With Iravan gone, Dhruv was in command of the Garden, and she read his nervousness. His hands shook as he removed his glasses and polished them on the edge of his kurta. He was as ill-equipped to be the lead councilor as she had been. How far the both of them had come from their days of secret machinations to gain a council seat.

“What has happened to the Ecstatics?”

she asked.

“I saw them in there…”

“We don’t know,”

Pranav replied.

“But we can guess. None of us are able to traject anymore.”

Ahilya had never spoken to Pranav before, but she knew he was one of Iravan’s top Ecstatics, once a Maze Architect of Nakshar, and a man who had both been imprisoned by the council she had been on, yet someone who had escaped excision because of everything she had done to protect him. He knew who she was, of course. Yet in his guarded gaze, she saw nothing but indifference, and it was almost comforting to feel as if she did not matter to him, that she was just another citizen. For a fleeting second Ahilya was grateful.

“Only the Ecstatics?”

she asked.

“The rest of you can traject?”

Naila shook her head.

“No, Ahilya-ve, we can’t either. But the rest of us haven’t been able to traject since the Moment broke.”

Chaiyya nodded, and Ahilya paused. Of course. She’d known that. In everything she’d learned since the Moment breaking, she had forgotten that the primary purpose of the universe was so architects could traject.

Pranav waved a hand toward the infirmary.

“Either way, now the Ecstatics have joined those ranks, because the Deepness is damaged too. And it’s hitting us worse than it did ordinary architects. Reyla says this is why Darsh lost control. He was trying to work in a realm that was changing as he trajected.”

Ahilya thought of the glassy-eyed stare of the Ecstatics. Maya flashed in her eyes—the Ecstatic Architect she’d seen ages ago in Nakshar’s sanctum, when Iravan had told her about the truth of Ecstasy. The ones she’d seen in Irshar’s infirmary resembled Maya so fully. She shivered, remembering her control of them in her Etherium.

“You seem fine,”

she ventured, staring at Pranav.

“For now. But I don’t think I, or any of the other in the Garden, will be exempt from this too long.”

“You think this is Iravan’s doing?”

Pranav studied her.

“Maybe? But I think not. The Deepness isn’t the Deepness anymore. It seems to be folding around itself much like in a deathmaze. And your architects cannot fully sense the shattered Moment either, though that is to be expected.”

“The three visions are collapsing,”

Chaiyya said.

“We think it is an effect of the Moment breaking. If Iravan is right, and all the realms are the same in some way, then the breaking of one was sure to have a massive consequence on the others. It is a wonder it has taken this long.”

Ahilya felt nauseated. Another calamity to add to her and Iravan’s list of transgressions. She did not need to ask why the collapse of the three visions was occurring now, she already knew it. Darsh had begun to unite with his yaksha, and unity by her experience brought about great change, both physical and metaphysical. Darsh’s unity with his yaksha had triggered the collapse, perhaps tipping an already wobbly rock off balance straight into the chasm of confusion.

Naila’s skin lit up as if to test it, but she quickly darkened. When she spoke, she was breathless as if she’d run a mile, and her eyes were wide.

“This… this collapse of the three visions,”

she breathed.

“Is this the evervision?”

Pranav shook his head.

“No. The evervision is a matter of perspective. Iravan-ve could always see the Moment, the Deepness, and his Etherium as separate things but he could also see them as the same, a switch that only he could do. The evervision is afforded to him, and only to him, because of his power. But this—”

He waved his hand.

“This is really happening. We have been calling it allvision.”

Pranav shrugged.

“There is a difference, even if it is a philosophical one.”

“It is more than a philosophical one,”

Naila said, her voice troubled.

“Because is it actually real?”

Her glance flicked to Ahilya, mildly apologetic, before turning to the others.

“Maybe it is a corruption of the Virohi. Maybe we think this allvision exists because the Virohi are corrupting us.”

“The corruption is not helping,”

Airav said.

“But Iravan shattered the Moment. The Moment affects consciousness, so it breaking changes our experience of reality. Yet what happens in the Moment renders outside of it too. Destroying it essentially unmoored reality. Subjective perception and objective reality are both broken now. We are headed toward a collapse of everything, matter, language, meaning, even thought.”

“We’re fucked, in short,”

Dhruv said.

“From every side.”

A silence echoed after those words. Ahilya studied her hands on her lap. They were trembling, but she watched it happen from afar, Dhruv’s words rippling through her.

“We cannot lose hope,”

Airav said, breaking the quiet.

“This decay of reality—this dissolution—is occurring fast, but we are still here. We can still hold meaningful conversation, we can still experience a shared reality, such as it is. Things are returning to their source, but both Irshar and the Garden were created of the original habitat. Our societies split into two, but the building blocks of these two places were the same. They were both made of everdust, though of course Irshar eventually encompassed the Virohi and the vriksh too. Now…”

Airav spun a finger to indicate the pictures on the bio-nodes.

“It appears that it is all coming back to what it once was—the original habitat. The city is trying to balance itself, which means we have hope of balancing ourselves too. Eskayra has already begun the migration to the new city for those citizens who are willing.”

“What?”

Ahilya asked, her head snapping up.

“When nightfall approaches?”

“Time is not a luxury we have,”

Dhruv said.

“Dissolution is already occurring, and it is likely to become faster. Sungineering is compromised with the loss of the Deepness. We are working this on the new energy from Irshar.”

He gestured toward the chamber, and Kiana nodded and placed a torch on the table. Purple sungineering light bounced off the bio-nodes, until Kiana turned it off.

If sungineering was unreliable and Ecstasy was dead, then humanity had reached the end of the line. Food, medicine, light, all of it was now on its last rations, reality itself forfeit. To send survivors out to the new city, scattering them when everyone needed to stay together, was so preposterous that Ahilya’s voice shook with emotion.

“If this is true,”

she said.

“then all the more reason to stay here in Irshar, or the Garden, or whatever this habitat is now. How do we even know if the new city is safe? We could be sending the citizens to more doom. You could be sending Eskayra to her death.”

“We are all dead sooner or later,”

Dhruv said flatly. He stood up, and everyone turned their eyes on him.

“We are all living with risk now. Reality’s first laws are already changing.”

He approached the closest bio-nodes, swiped on the glassy screen a few times, pressing buttons, then stepped back.

The images all over the solarchamber changed. Ahilya could still see the dome of the shimmering dust, this time more clearly than before, but she also saw the jungle beyond. The trees that had until recently been stationary were now quaking as though an earthrage were imminent. The landscape shrunk, and Ahilya realized it wasn’t merely the trees quaking. Dhruv was somehow capturing the skies too, and a distortion cracked the blue sky, a splitting in the middle of the air like lightning, but black, tiny cracks over and over again. Images flickered again, of mountains and valleys that had formed indiscriminately after the battle with the Virohi, and a roaring, painful sound reverberated through Ahilya’s bones. Irshar and the Garden stood in the middle of this, but the images shuddered, several bio-nodes blanking out as undoubtedly drones fell from the air before newer ones replaced them.

Naila exchanged a startled glance with Ahilya. They were both thinking of the same thing. Planetrage.

“Dhruv’s drones have reported strange events,”

Chaiyya said.

“Fire breathing within water vapor. Dust translating into leaves then phasing back. Weather morphing in seconds, and gravity failing with rocks floating on their own. The city Iravan built is holding, much like the habitat here, for whatever reason. We are hedging our bets for survival—which is why only volunteers are allowed to go to the new city.”

She left the rest unsaid. If humanity had a chance, they could not all be caught in Irshar. This way, there could be some survivors. If they survived the planetrage and the subsequent dissolution, they could save the species.

Ahilya looked away from the bio-nodes, her head splitting. She was so tired now. How much devastation could the human mind take? She thought of her sister, and Arth and Kush, and the children of the ashram. She could not fathom it. The end of everything. Maybe this is what it was like, she thought. Back when they were debating whether to fly away or to stay down here. Maybe that’s why some of them chose to fly, and the others to build habitats. Not a disagreement like we thought, but a desperate hedging of bets.

“Did you know about this?”

Basav asked her quietly.

She could not look up. “Yes,”

she whispered.

“I—I suspected it. Iravan and I talked about it.”

In halting words, she told the others of what she’d been discussing with Iravan before Darsh had begun his unity with the yaksha.

“If the Moment breaking has caused this, then only the repair of the Moment can fix it. But—”

But Iravan had wanted the Virohi first, driven in his hate and rage. She had the means to destroy them, and she and her husband were still standing on opposite ends, holding their entire species hostage, arguing the fulfillment of his capital desire against what she thought was right.

In the Etherium, she felt the Virohi’s terror. The wrongness of sacrificing them, when they had grieved the Moment in a way none of them had, filled her with a queasiness. Who were they, really? What was their true form? What would finally release them—save them in the manner they needed to be saved?

She wanted to tell the others what she was thinking. She wanted them to help her.

But Ahilya couldn’t form the words.

These people hated the Virohi; they hated her. They would not listen. They would think her corrupted if she argued the Virohi’s case now—when the answer was so obvious to them that the cosmic creatures’ destruction could end their own misery. She did not know the wisdom of defending the Virohi anymore. The Virohi were already giving her more power and access than the others could know. Perhaps this new ability she’d found in her Etherium was simply an unconscious function of overwriting. Yet Ahilya could sense that the Virohi in their advanced, evolved state were trying to tell her something. The knot of roots in her chest tightened over her. The overwriting, the repair of the Moment, their fear, this was all connected in some way. She felt the puzzle pieces circling her, but they were too hazy, too senseless. She could not share these arbitrary notions with the others.

“We need Iravan,”

she said, her voice small.

“Here with us, helping us. But I—I still don’t know where he is.”

“Fortunately, I might have an idea.”

Dhruv beckoned to her, and waited until she had arisen and joined him. He tapped at one of the panes of the solarchamber, and the whole thing turned black then whisked up. Watched by the other councilors, he led her to a rocky wall, pointed at it, then stepped back.

It took Ahilya a moment to understand. This was the same wall where Iravan had disappeared. She stared at it, then back at Dhruv.

“Desire it,”

he said softly.

Ahilya touched the wall with trembling fingers. She closed her eyes, picturing Iravan in her mind, and between her brows, she thought she caught a glimpse of him. Just a shadow and silver light, glinting from between the leaves.

She focused her desire, like she had done so many times. The tree within her mind bloomed. Images seared her mind, Iravan on a staircase, rock and earth pouring upward around him, an underground labyrinth, a cavity in the rock.

Then the rock face in front of her split open and the images subsided.

Dust and earth rained down on her face, and she stepped back as a long crack separated the blank wall, only big enough for her to squeeze through. Two sungineering drones zipped past her at once, entering the darkness first.

Dhruv nodded, unsurprised.

“As always,”

he said.

“he will speak with you, and you alone.”

He stared at Ahilya, and in his gaze she felt the weight of every other person’s fear and judgement.

“You can get through to him. Will you go?”