Page 45 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

IRAVAN

Iravan fought to destroy himself.

The falcon was using the everpower—and he attempted to seize control, obliterate his own existence—but it was too powerful. It had created an army.

He saw himself from afar, trapped behind his eyes, watching as he desecrated Ahilya’s forest, chasing her, attacking her. In the underground caves beneath the new city, his hands trembled, all his willpower spent on ensuring his fingers did not crush Ahilya’s throat completely. When his fingers loosened, he felt a brief flash of victory. Ahilya raked in a breath—but it was all either of them could manage, frozen in this eternal moment of horror as they were, his body overpowering hers.

For hours, imprisoned in his thoughts, Iravan had tried to wrest control back from the falcon. He had tried to step away from Ahilya, he’d tried to slow his approach. He had begged her to leave, but each time he managed a sliver of control, the falcon took over. It used his mouth to speak, inflicting its will through his past lives. It sounded like him, so much that even Iravan did not know who he was anymore. He had tried to reclaim his past selves, and shown Ahilya with the sculptures he had created in brief moments of lucidity that he loved her. It was the shoddiest of clues, but he had given in to the yaksha’s hate, and he could not attempt any more. He had subsumed the falcon, but it had won. He had chosen to fall into the falcon’s trap—not Nidhirv or any of his past lives, but him. Now it was too late.

Ahilya whimpered in front of him.

He wept.

It had astonished him at first that the falcon’s plan was to traject Ahilya, a complex, complete being. Architect consciousnesses were broken, but complete beings stood against cosmic creatures, shielding the world from an earthrage.

Then Iravan had remembered. He’d used Ahilya’s consciousness to reform his, a blueprint to knit himself back with the falcon in that first act of unity. The falcon knew Ahilya because of it. Now with Ahilya a vessel for the cosmic creatures, the falcon knew exactly how to destroy her.

When she threw a branch at him he rejoiced, but the falcon swept it aside with the everpower. When she used roots to trap him, the falcon crushed them, even though Iravan wanted her to escape. He attempted to slow his feet, to gain enough control to be clumsy as he followed her, but the falcon hastened him. I’ve always been too weak, he thought. The Resonance always knew it.

Ahilya fell, scrambling back, and Iravan uttered a cry of horror. The falcon was upon her, landing lightly with his body.

His finger twitched, tightening around her throat. Destroy, the falcon whispered. The cosmic creatures. Destroy.

Reality distorted, the vriksh in the Etherium shrinking, behind it the mirrored chambers tilting, and the echoes of his grief and horror splintering around them.

In a final act of will Iravan snatched at the everpower, trying to seize it back from the falcon. He could tell from the brief flicker in her eyes that she saw him, him, not this mad creature who was killing her, but him. Please, he begged, asking her to save her and himself somehow. Please.