Page 50 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

AHILYA

She stood immobile for long seconds, staring after Iravan, until something nudged her feet. Ahilya looked down to see a tree root jutting out of the soil. She was certain it had not been there before, but she felt its pressure against her again as if it were telling her to move.

Still, she hesitated. Here, on this patch of ground, she had excised Iravan. Here, he had ascended to the skies again, in a final task that she had set him. Ahilya-ve, he had called her, and for once the suffix did not embarrass her. No, she felt a strange sense pour into her, something akin to honor.

She blinked, knowing she had no time to think this through. Iravan had already left to do what they all needed him to do, and she had to prepare the others.

Ahilya climbed down the hill in a daze, tree roots breaking through the earth, nudging her on until she could see the migration from Irshar clearly. The citizens poured in thick crowds, a wave of humanity appearing out of the jungle. So many, so fast? How had all of them come here so quickly? She could not distinguish the faces of the refugees, but she could see them traveling down roads, coming from many different directions. She could see the towering trees of the jungle waving all around the city, and it did not make sense.

Why so many roads, why so many inlets? She knew her mind was trying to distract her from the horror of what had happened, and Ahilya clutched at these inane questions like a branch within a flood, keeping her from sinking into grief. She could not fathom it yet, everything she and her husband had undergone.

There would be time later, if they survived this. She was not alone in her suffering. Whatever was happening here in the jungle and the new city was clearly an effect of everything that had transpired between her and her husband. She and Iravan had used the memories of humanity as weapons against each other. Ahilya could imagine memories ripped away from individuals, a pain that was physical and deep like a cut, yet buried deep. Humanity would feel the loss, if not immediately then gravely, and for the tree, it would manifest as a wild recoiling of branches, a closing to protect itself while it felt the loss of all those memories. Perhaps it had already happened, confusing and alarming all the citizens. There was worse yet to come.

Here and there, Ahilya saw black-clad Ecstatics trudging with the others. As a part of Iravan’s Garden, most had been aloof and arrogant, feeding on his resentment—but the merging with Irshar seemed to have wrought a change. Reunited with their citizen kin, they moved through the gathering stopping often to assist those who fell, those who lingered. No one seemed to be in charge of them anymore, but they had fallen back into known roles as architects, meant to protect humanity.

Did they have any power left with Iravan gone? Were they no longer seeking their yakshas? The council had claimed no Ecstatic could traject, and Ahilya did not think her battle with Iravan had changed the Deepness to allow for it again, though the extradimensional realms were merging. Yet Iravan had subsumed all the yakshas. From what Dhruv had said, Pranav had evidently fainted. Surely the Ecstatics must have felt a loss within themselves—and perhaps it was this loss that was motivating them to seek the familiarity of their friends and family that they’d disdained not too long ago. The architects Iravan had sent to Irshar to make amends had opened that gate, and recent events had swept the others back into the embrace of their material bonds.

It was a startling thought, to consider material bonds still a factor in their civilization when so much had changed, when she’d seen the corruption of a capital desire, and the redemption her bond to Iravan had offered the both of them. But what were material bonds if not compassion and care? What were they if not love? Ahilya herself had tied her life to her sister, to Iravan, and ultimately to the Virohi, in a strange bond no one could have conceived. If all that a material bond was meant to be was humanity at its most human self, then perhaps there was still a chance the future she intended could be balanced. She needed all of them now—architects, non-architects, Ecstatics, citizens of Irshar and those of the new city. No one could be left out of this war now.

A shape detached from one of the waves entering the city, approaching her—Eskayra perhaps, or Chaiyya, or Naila. Ahilya’s earpiece was lost in the rubble below, but her sungineering had started working again, so Dhruv would have known of her arrival. She braced herself to hold strong to her decision, no matter what her friends said, yet as the shape became clearer, Ahilya paused. Of all the people to approach her, she had not expected her sister.

Her long hair tied behind her in a messy tail, Tariya climbed the hill slowly. Ahilya’s sister had never been one to exert herself physically, her body prone to severe tiredness, her limbs shivery. After Bharavi’s execution, she had only grown more fragile. Still, Ahilya knew better than to ask about her welfare now—her sister would only disdain her questions. She hurried to catch up to Tariya, then the both of them began to climb down to the center of the city wordlessly.

There was a lightness to Tariya’s steps at odds with the grief that still breathed under her skin. Some of her sister’s beauty had returned, as if she had come to accept her grief, letting it shape her instead of fighting it.

Ahilya did not know what to make of her presence. She could feel her like a tug in her mind. If she tried, she would be able to hear her sister’s memories—but Ahilya held the current at a distance. It was only a matter of time it swept her away. She was prepared, but the others were not. She would not go into it without warning them.

Tariya stumbled, and Ahilya went to help instinctively, but before she could Tariya straightened. Her sister arched an eyebrow.

“You left Irshar?”

Ahilya asked, to cover up her move.

“I thought you hated the idea.”

“I still do,”

Tariya replied dryly.

“But this is Irshar.”

Surprised, Ahilya paused to study the city. In the distance she could see the vriksh, but what she had considered a trick of the light was occurring in real time. The vriksh was growing again, ever larger, its canopy blooming high, its boughs stretching to shelter the new city. As she watched, spires and towers came under its deep shade, entering an artificial nightfall. The same strange dust that had hovered around the Garden and Irshar before trickling into the new city.

We didn’t get to decide a name, Ahilya thought in slow wonder. After today, they might not need to. They might not be. It was a sobering thought.

Ahilya had deliberately not been paying attention to her Etherium, but watching the tree expand to cover the new city was too big to ignore. She sensed the leaves fluttering over her face in the third vision, and it was all she could do not to sink into their embrace. Perhaps the tree recognized this city as part of its own self. A sibling territory. A sister-ashram. Wrought as part of another habitat, one long lost.

“What is going on down there with the citizens?”

Ahilya asked.

“What do people make of all this?”

“Why, are you going to provide us an explanation?”

Tariya said.

“Are you going to save us, Ahilya?”

The words were caustic, but Ahilya did not rise to the bait like she might have once. She simply studied her sister, and though color bloomed in Tariya’s cheeks, her sister smiled, her expression satisfied. Tariya’s eyes glowed as if she had won something. She might as well have been skipping.

“You’re in a good mood,”

Ahilya observed.

“You are in so much trouble,”

Tariya replied, shaking her head.

“They are livid.”

Ahilya didn’t need to ask who she meant. She could well imagine Dhruv rushing to the other councilors to discuss what he’d overheard, the rest of them panicking and helpless, fearing an attack on their consciousness.

“They tried to cut down the vriksh,”

Tariya told her, the mirth leaving her.

An act of desperation, Ahilya knew. She could not blame them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. They tried. People were complaining of terrible symptoms of illness—dizziness, forgetting their names, unsure of what life was like in the airborne ashrams, sometimes unable to recall even what they did hours ago. The infirmary was full until the council decided to axe the tree, but the tree didn’t let them—or perhaps their minds fought it. Everyone knows we are all tied to it.”

Tariya fell silent, and Ahilya chewed her lip.

So Tariya knew enough about the vriksh to know how everyone’s minds were connected to it. Was it simply knowledge she’d picked up as Bharavi’s wife, or had she felt something of Ahilya’s battle with Iravan? Or—most likely—the council had been forced to share the danger of overwriting, especially with those who worked in the infirmary, so as to better help the patients.

There were no real secrets between the council and the citizens anymore. Tariya was influential in her own way, and she would have objected to the assault on the tree, simply as a matter of principle, to oppose the council. Ahilya could well imagine it—her sister standing in front of the vriksh demanding an explanation. The council would not have found it easy to push her aside. Either way, if the citizens already knew of their connection to the vriksh, it made Ahilya’s job easier.

“They sent you to speak to me?”

she asked.

“I am the least threatening, according to them,”

Tariya replied scoffing.

“They don’t know better, do they?”

Fierce pride radiated from Tariya, warming Ahilya’s skin as if a soft warm fire lived within her. Pride for herself or for Ahilya? With Tariya, it could be either, but Ahilya didn’t probe, and nor did she ask for an explanation of her words. Tariya was not threatening to her. She was Ahilya’s vulnerability, and Ahilya would not change that for the world. The two continued on in silence until they reached the city.

Tree roots splayed out everywhere, widening to become as thick as a limb. The ground was uneven, shifting constantly, if slowly, so that Ahilya finally took Tariya’s hand in hers, despite her sister’s squawk of protest. She could see gaps in the floor closing, knitted over by roots that plunged below, while the canopy of the vriksh waved far above the spires of the buildings. In the time it had taken for the two of them to come here, the tree had already wrapped this new city into whatever had remained of Irshar and the Garden, returning all that was separated to the same source. Soon, the canopy would enclose them in a dome too; Ahilya could feel the tree’s intention.

She hastened the two of them, weaving past the people milling about, exclaiming at the tree. Tariya pointed them to a low building with a stone courtyard, outside which Umang stood sentry. He waved Ahilya and Tariya in hurriedly. Green had erupted over the stone slabs of the courtyard, and right in the center, a solarchamber blinked—perhaps the same one Ahilya had left from.

The two sisters entered to see the councilors seated around a table. Several architects stood about too, as Chaiyya and Eskayra delivered instructions to them. Hands full of parchments and solarnotes, the architects pushed past Ahilya, until only the councilors remained, intent on their discussion.

“Well,”

Tariya announced.

“I brought her.”

The others jumped, then stared, shocked that she had actually managed to lead Ahilya there. Their gazes swept to Ahilya, shock giving way to fear and alarm.

Basav stood up, his whole body trembling.

“What have you done?”

he shrieked.

“What have you done, you foolish girl?”

Dhruv looked at her like he’d never seen her before. Chaiyya and Kiana drew back, their mouths trembling. Eskayra’s face was unreadable. Pranav was ashen faced, huddled within a shawl. Only Naila gave her a slight nod, while Airav simply appeared as though he had known they would come to this instant all along.

Ahilya took a chair. She studied all of them, her gaze lingering on Pranav who had fainted after Iravan’s subsummation of his yaksha. Then she turned to Dhruv.

“So you told them?”

she asked.

“That you mean to kill our species? That you mean to overwrite us all.”

Dhruv uttered a snort of disbelief.

“Yes, Ahilya. I told them.”

“Overwriting cannot be stopped,”

she said.

“It’s not possible.”

“You did not even attempt it,”

Basav began.

“You wanted this all along.”

“You are corrupted beyond recognition,”

Weira cried, pointing a finger at her.

The others began to murmur too, and Chaiyya clutched Airav’s hand, her eyes shining with silent tears. In the solarchamber, the buzz compounded, as if sounds were bouncing off the glass screens, multiplying. Ahilya felt her mind tighten as though pinched—their fear cascaded into her, rippling—and she saw the vriksh balk, its roots weakening and shrinking, reacting to their desire. Her eyes met Eskayra’s over the din, and Eskayra put two fingers to her mouth and released a shrill whistle.

Everyone silenced, gaping at her, then back to Ahilya.

Ahilya did not wait for them to begin murmuring again. She spoke, her voice sharp.

“I won’t lie to you. Overwriting is not going to be easy, and it’s not preferable. But this is the only way to survive dissolution.”

“Iravan-ve,”

Airav began, but she cut him off, raising a hand.

“He has refused to destroy the Virohi.”

A stunned silence greeted her words. Basav’s eyes bugged out, and he was the one to break the quiet.

“Are you saying that you changed an Ecstatic Architect’s capital desire? The Ecstatic’s capital desire?”

“He changed it himself,”

Ahilya answered.

“He has freed himself of the falcon-yaksha’s hold and of the past lives. But his everpower is waning.”

She could see their curiosity regarding what had happened, but there was no time nor purpose to filling them in. If overwriting was going to occur the way she imagined, they would soon all be privy to her memories anyway. Right now, to tell them that she’d excised Iravan would only raise their hackles.

“Iravan has promised to try to repair the Moment,”

she said instead.

“But there is a reason he refused to destroy the Virohi. He could see finally that there is only one way for us to endure. We can avoid extinction and erasure, but we have to do it together.”

“Together how, exactly?”

Dhruv asked, suspiciously.

She swept her gaze over them, the mutinous and scared faces, the trembling bodies. She knew she was not asking them an easy thing, and Ahilya’s voice softened. Her encounters with the Virohi had already had a brutal effect on her, and she could not deny the loss of herself she’d experienced. What she was about to suggest to the others would be to unleash such a loss on themselves, and everyone. They deserved to know why. She tried to explain.

“Ever since the Moment broke, the Virohi have been terrified. They were badly injured by Iravan’s attack on them with the sungineering bomb. I have seen them weep, and I believe they started the overwriting as a way to strengthen their consciousness against dissolution—something they saw occurring. The Moment has always been an anchor of our reality, but it was a manifestation of consciousness too. Without consciousness, there is no perception of reality. You all know this already.”

No one spoke to object, but Ahilya saw a few of the council frowning, Dhruv among them.

“With the Moment gone, our reality became forfeit,”

she continued on.

“The only reason dissolution has taken this long is because the Virohi began overwriting us. Reality needed a new anchor, and the vriksh was that anchor. Without the Virohi, the core tree was the sum total of all our remembered consciousness, but with the Virohi, it became something greater, a mini universe. Reality and consciousness intertwined in the vriksh the same way they once did in the Moment, and only the Virohi could do such a thing—they are creatures bound by physical laws yet not caught by them.”

Ahilya felt a strange exhilaration. The explanation had come to her when Iravan had nearly strangled her. It was as if in that moment when she’d lost it all, pieces had clicked together in her mind. She’d felt sorrow, and grief, and terror, because she’d assumed she’d die before she could share this with the others. But she was here now, and the others were listening.

“The Virohi are overwriting us, but it has all been for a reason,”

Ahilya said.

“We have felt the effects of dissolution because the overwriting is incomplete. The core tree is connected to us, and because we do not desire to be merged with the Virohi, we are fighting this assimilation. It makes us weak. We are ready prey for the planetrage and dissolution, and we are at threat of extinction—Virohi and human alike. But if we stop fighting this assimilation, if we encourage it, then it is possible we could stand together against what is to come. With us no longer resisting the tree’s desires, the tree could root into the earth deeper. It could anchor. Iravan could repair the Moment and fix our reality, and we—”

“We would be erased,”

Dhruv said.

“We would no longer truly be human beings.”

“We would evolve,”

she replied.

“Into something else. Yes.”

She knew the impossibility of her ask. The ability to make an enduring change for the survival of their species, yet do so with a deep loss of themselves… She had contended with this question as had Iravan. In a way, that question had defined both of them, and their marriage. It had set them on this course, long before either had known they were destined for it. No one person could answer this question.

But perhaps a people could.

Finally, it was all their choice. Not her burden alone, nor Iravan’s. But all of theirs.

“This is drastic,”

Chaiyya said in a small voice.

“There are other methods apart from overwriting. The vriksh has codes embedded within it to preserve architects and citizens, and I could show you methods to heal the Virohi. If you entreated—”

“Are any of us capable of healing the Virohi?”

Ahilya asked.

“I know I am not—you are asking me to heal cosmic creatures, and any knowledge of trajection will not be enough to heal a massive consciousness like that.”

“You don’t know that,”

Chaiyya argued.

“Architects perform healing on consciousness all the time.”

“For small injuries and with the Moment intact,”

Ahilya said gently.

“With time, and with patience. But you could not heal Airav fully, Chaiyya. You could not heal Manav, or any of the other excised architects. What the Virohi suffered with the destruction of the Moment is akin to that, but greater, so much greater.”

Chaiyya opened her mouth, then closed it, frowning.

Basav spoke into her silence.

“Even if healing won’t work,”

he said scowling.

“this is still too drastic. Nothing like this has ever been attempted in our histories—even when Ecstasy was legal. The Moment is broken, but the Deepness is intact. Maybe the Ecstatics of the Garden can help all of us become Ecstatics. We could unify in the Deepness—perform some kind of supertrajection. If he cannot help us”—Basav pointed at Pranav who huddled down—“that little girl—Reyla—she seems to know enough about the Deepness; she could guide us along with the others.”

Ahilya’s brows rose, surprised. Pranav hunched lower in his seat, not meeting her gaze as she glanced at him. It was a measure of how shaken Basav was with her proposal that he was suggesting this. Not just to become an Ecstatic, but to be guided by Reyla—a girl so young he would not give her a second glace if she were in his Academy.

“Has Reyla escaped the effects of Iravan’s subsummation?”

she asked gently.

Pranav shook his head silently.

“I thought not.”

Ahilya sighed.

“You’re welcome to try,”

she said to Basav.

“but the Deepness is not working as it once was, remember? It is already melding into the allvision. Besides, do you think the collective will of the Ecstatics is capable of doing this? They are exhausted, as we all are. I will not browbeat you into this, but I do not see any other way except this.”

Basav’s body shook and he buried his head in his hands. The others fell silent too, and on their faces she saw their revulsion, desperation, and panic. They were clutching at straws, seeking another solution when there was nowhere else to turn anymore. Perhaps it was their panic making them forget things that had occurred; or perhaps, like Tariya had mentioned, they were simply experiencing a loss of memory. Either way, Ahilya felt their grief and it was her own. There was nothing she could say to comfort them. All she could do was give them a few precious moments to come to terms with the enormity of her request.

“It is not possible,”

Purva said, speaking for the first time. Ahilya had almost forgotten the sungineer’s presence, but now Purva leaned forward, her face drawn into a skeptical frown.

“You realize what you’re suggesting, don’t you?”

she said to Ahilya.

“You are saying that all of us need to align our desires toward one thing. We can sit here in this council wanting and hoping for that, but how are we to make this possible for every survivor?”

“We’ve done this before,”

Eskayra pointed out.

“When we faced the Virohi after the crash of the Conclave, the non-architects aligned their desires toward a singular purpose to create a defense for Irshar. Architects are used to this kind of thing too, in the Moment, working together.”

“But the time with the non-architects did not truly work,”

Purva said.

“When the Conclave crash-landed and we faced the Virohi, you had to take control, Ahilya-ve.”

“Is that what you want, Ahilya?”

Dhruv asked quietly.

“Complete control of humanity?”

“No,”

she said at once.

“I am suggesting the opposite. Last time I had to be in control, because the core trees and the habitat were conditioned to obey me first. The Virohi bent to me because they recognized me from the time I stopped the first earthrage. But what if the reason everything has been so hard, even for me, is because I took that control? What if I took myself out of the equation altogether?”

“Are you suggesting suicide?”

Dhruv asked dryly.

“No, of course not. But right now, my consciousness stands as a buffer between the rest of the humanity and the overwriting. I have stood in control of myself, letting the Virohi only find form as me. But if I stepped away, letting overwriting occur, control would not be with any one of us.”

“A true hive-mind,”

Basav said, his face revolted.

“Like the Virohi.”

“Like the Moment,”

Ahilya countered.

“A network of consciousnesses. A Moment as if it were alive.”

Basav’s furrowed his brows in confusion. Ahilya felt a jolt of victory. He was listening.

It was Chaiyya who spoke, her voice shaking.

“The last time overwriting happened, all of our consciousnesses merged. It was chaos, it was terrifying, and we became you. That could be our permanent state. We wouldn’t know who we are, let alone be able to fight the planetrage or dissolution.”

“We wouldn’t need to fight. The vriksh would do it, and we would lend it our strength, our purpose. As long as all of us willed with our deepest minds to survive and endure—as we have done before—the vriksh will follow our command.”

Ahilya leaned back, exhausted.

“I cannot think of another solution. Is it not worth the attempt?”

“Is it?”

Dhruv asked.

“What you are suggesting is that all of us allow you to do this so none of us have a sense of self. So there is no I, ever, for our species. It would be a kind of dissolution too, all of our minds become one entity, our closest secrets open to the others, our shame and pain and all the indignities we’ve ever suffered, memories and feelings and ideas we would take to our graves, all of it privy to be seen and judged. Our powerlessness exhibited to everyone, in our smallest, pettiest ways. Is that a good thing? To be seen in your nakedness, in your vulnerability?”

“But not just in those,”

Airav chimed in quietly.

“We would become one, in our greatest ways too. In our compassion and beauty and kindness and love. We would not be persons. We would become… a people. With all the good and the bad. And once the neural bridge is complete between the Virohi and the vriksh, once the overwriting has taken place, then we will truly be able to fight our extinction.”

“Without a choice,”

Dhruv retorted.

“With no knowledge of what such overwriting is going to do to us, and no knowledge of what we are doing either. With no sentience, for all we know.”

“But with agency,”

Airav replied softly.

“Together.”

There was a silence as the rest of them absorbed this.

Ahilya looked from one face to another. Trisha, Pranav, and other architects from Irshar were nodding slowly, as though this was something inevitable. Airav gave her a small smile; architects had been trained for this, they were used to consciousness-based communication in the Moment. There was precedent for personal truths being bared to one another. That is what the Examination of Ecstasy was, the encounter with veristem, and in so many ways the architects already shared one mind in the shared reality of the Moment and Deepness.

Yet the non-architects…

Dhruv, Purva, and Eskayra shifted in their seats, frowning. She could read her doubt in them… to lose all power the instant they had received a small measure of it. Had Ahilya not feared such an erasure once? How could she suggest this, when her kind had been on the receiving end of erasure through history? Perhaps back in the early days of flight, when the non-architects and architects had to decide what to do for the survival of their species, they had been presented with such a choice too. Maybe erasure-evolution like this was the only way forward then. But Ahilya had suffered too much to think it permissible. She didn’t say anything. To this point, she had no defense.

In the silence, Tariya cleared her throat, standing up straighter as Ahilya and the rest of them turned to her.

“If anyone’s asking,”

she said, her voice trembling.

“Then I am with Ahilya.”

This was surprising. Ahilya tried to catch her sister’s eye, but Tariya steadfastly refused to meet her gaze. Instead, she spoke to the air.

“We have been denied control all our lives. Citizens have suffered because of architects, and we’ve lost people we loved—some of whom were also architects. My wife—Bharavi—”

Here she choked, but rallied before anyone could speak.

“We have lacked control, but this overwriting would provide us with something equal to the rest of you. I don’t think the citizens will object. It will be a form of shared control.”

“It will be a form of no control,”

Dhruv said.

“No one entity would have control. That’s the entire point. Whatever we become will be greater than we are as individuals. This is the opposite of what you and your citizens have been demanding.”

“It’s still better than what we’ve had so far,”

Tariya shot back.

“All along we’ve had to work according to what the council has allowed us to do. Even here, even in Irshar. But this way, we’d be no more nor less than the rest of you. You sit here making judgements and decisions for everyone. Well, this way we would have a seat at the table too. All of us, every one of us. Are you going to deny us that if we wish it among us?”

Ahilya tried to hide her humorless grin. Tariya was her sister through and through. They had never seen eye to eye on things, and Tariya’s reasons were different from Ahilya’s own, but perhaps everyone could see now how they were related. The citizens had long desired control of their lives, and many had chosen not to leave Irshar because of it. Perhaps this would not be such a difficult thing to ask of them.

Dhruv seemed to be coming to the same conclusion. He removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

“You all are making a lot of assumptions,”

he said.

“A hive mind—a network and circuitry like this—we have nothing to protect our consciousness. No breaker.”

“We would simply implode,”

Kiana said grimly, agreeing.

“That much informational flow, for any of us to see and experience that without any preventative nodes. It could be very bad. It could be the chaos of before, a thousand times worse. Perhaps the only reason that is not occurring right now is because Ahilya provides a buffer.”

The sungineer’s keen eyes studied Ahilya.

“What if you continued to be the buffer? What if you guided this overwriting slowly instead of simply standing aside? Is it possible we could network like a hive, but still somehow remain ourselves? That we could enter this with more control?”

Ahilya thought this over. “Maybe,”

she said slowly.

She had not suggested it, or dared to consider it, dictated to by her desire to not become a tyrant. But if she did guide the overwriting—if she controlled the onset of the flood—perhaps they could find their way back to their selves. An image formed in her head—all of them nestled within the vriksh, sleeping, their minds caught in a dream-state while the vriksh reacted to their unspoken desire to survive, its roots sinking into the earth.

The image had come too soon, too clearly, an answer from the vriksh for her unspoken question of forcing this decision.

“It’s possible, I think,”

she said.

“It wouldn’t be overwriting, if we could still remember a part of ourselves. It would be…”

“Cohesion,”

Airav replied, and Ahilya nodded. The two of them were already doing it, connected in a strange way. This Cohesion was already occurring for those who were aligned.

Chaiyya looked disturbed, her gaze moving between the two.

“If we agree to this, there would have to be rules,”

she said.

“Only volunteers, only adults. We cannot ask every single person, especially children—”

“No,”

Ahilya replied sharply.

“It has to be everyone. The tree is coded to all the citizens, architects, non-architects, Ecstatics, adults, children, every single one of us alike. And we need to desire a single thing from it, survival, the same way we would when desiring a safe landing in the jungle in days past.”

Chaiyya opened her mouth to object, but Ahilya shook her head.

“We cannot afford anything else,”

she said, finality in her voice.

“If we are going to do this, then we all have to do this. No negotiation, no exceptions. Anything else would be too much of a risk. We have no idea how the core tree will respond if we sever ourselves before we even start.”

Perhaps Chaiyya was thinking of her infant daughters—and for an instant, a deep misgiving entered Ahilya. What was she thinking, asking for such a massive change? What if the children got hurt doing this? Shock and terror gibbered in her, but she tamped them down. There was no other way forward. They were all facing extinction. This was the only way to protect the children.

Finally, one by one, they all nodded. Basav looked horrified but resigned. Chaiyya simply appeared tired, her face a scowl. Airav looked pleased, and the non-architects upset. None of them really liked this solution, but they didn’t have to. They were discussing the end of their species as they knew it. How could any of them come to it willingly? Still, they had agreed—and it was enough.

Ahilya slumped in her chair, suddenly tired.

“It will happen soon,”

she said quietly.

“I can feel the vriksh in my mind, calling to me. I can barely hold this Cohesion back as it is. With overwriting occurring so quickly, Cohesion will occur soon too, and I have to prepare on how to guide it. So go to your loved ones. Stay with them, and tell them what is occurring. Comfort them if you can. We will all reckon with ourselves soon enough.”

The others arose, leaving hastily. Tariya stared at Ahilya, as if about to say something, but she simply shrugged a shoulder and left with the others. Soon the chamber was empty, save for Naila, Eskayra, and Dhruv. Ahilya did not ask Eskayra to leave—she knew it would be futile. Sure enough, Esk came and sat down next to her, and took her hand.

“Did he hurt you?”

Eskayra asked quietly.

“Yes,”

Ahilya replied.

“And was it worth it?”

The other woman’s gaze was soft, free of judgement. Ahilya looked at her, at the bow-shaped lips, and the short hair, and the strength within her. For a small instant, she allowed herself to detach her mind from Iravan’s. It was like shrugging off a particularly heavy, all-consuming, cloak. She felt naked, like she did not know herself. Not even with the Virohi—her identity churned and spit out—had she felt such an alienation, simultaneously strange, and terrible, and lonely, and exhilarating.

Ahilya leaned forward and pressed her lips to Eskayra’s.

Eskayra’s mouth opened under hers, willing and eager, and for the first time in a long time, Ahilya felt a stirring of desire. Esk’s arms circled her closer, her lips brushing over Ahilya’s neck on the soft bruises Iravan had left, fluttering over her face to hum over the tear tracks, then back to the mouth where she willed Ahilya to heal herself. She tasted of earth and hope and resignation, and it was too complex an emotion lurking within the softness of the kiss. Ahilya knew there were others around perhaps watching them, but she couldn’t care. She was so desperately lonely, and it had been so long. With Cohesion occurring, what was the point of privacy? Everything was ending, then why deny herself? At least with Esk’s touch, she remembered that she was still alive, if only for a few more hours.

Eskayra broke the kiss, pulling away with a sigh.

“I have waited,”

she said.

“And I’ll wait longer. We have to work our way toward this.”

Despite herself, Ahilya blushed.

“I didn’t think the kiss was that bad.”

Esk gave her a slight grin.

“Not the kiss. Us. You have so much to sort, don’t you?”

From another person, Ahilya would have felt rejection—but Esk’s hand was still intertwined with hers, and she leaned forward to kiss her forehead. Ahilya understood. Later, Esk was saying. If there was a later.

Ahilya turned away to study Naila, who had remained seated. Neither she nor Dhruv had looked up to her and Esk, both of them lost in their thoughts. Naila was studying the same beads she’d had before, twining them around her hands. What did she see in them? What significance did they hold for her? Ahilya felt a passing curiosity but brushed it away.

“Are you all right?”

she asked.

“Iravan subsumed all the yakshas. Yours included. I don’t know how the Ecstatics are still walking.”

“They fainted, as did I,”

Naila said, shrugging.

“But you saw Pranav revived. None of us feel any different to what we have before.”

“And those who were in the infirmary? The rogue Ecstatics?”

“Revived as well, and released. To be with their families and loved ones when the migration began.”

“Is there an explanation for their revival?”

Ahilya asked.

“None that we know,”

the Maze Architect replied, her mind clearly preoccupied.

Iravan had said that subsuming the other yakshas would be like completion to the architects. Is that what these people felt? Or perhaps the effects were not visible yet. The shock had presented itself, but not the whole consequence. What did it matter now, anyway? The yakshas were gone, but the architects were still here. Human, and soon to become part of Cohesion.

“Naila,”

Ahilya said softly.

“You should go. To your friends, your lovers…”

“I am here, Ahilya-ve,”

Naila replied, her voice quiet. She gave Ahilya a swift, roguish wink, but the expression was pained, as if she couldn’t quite hide her fear.

Ahilya did not press her. Such fleeting choices were all that was left to them. Naila would leave if she told her to, but whatever her reasons, Ahilya was grateful for her company.

She turned to Dhruv instead, who had begun dismantling the solarchamber. The stone courtyard appeared beyond it, grass and tree roots writhing, so that soon they sat around a round table under a sky wreathed by the vriksh’s canopy. One by one the bio-nodes came down, all except a single one. Dhruv pulled up a chair and sat in front of it. Though the images of the approaching planetrage were clear, his eyes were unseeing, staring as if into his mind.

“Dhruv?”

Ahilya asked gently.

“I am where I belong,”

he said, a soft scowl on his face. He turned back to the bio-node, swiping at a few images. Ahilya did not know what to make of it, but he was allowed his secrets and thoughts too, for as long as he could call them his own. She tipped her head back, staring at the strange swirling shield above the city. She felt the vriksh in her mind, preparing itself. Slowly, second by second, Ahilya watched the leaves rain down in the Etherium. When the last leaf fell, Cohesion would begin, but if she were to guide it, she’d have to be purposeful about taking control.

“You agreed to this,”

she said to Dhruv softly, tipping her chin down to glance at him.

“You know something, don’t you? It is not like you to agree to something like this so quickly.”

Dhruv’s scowl became bigger. She had not asked a question, and he owed her nothing.

When he spoke, it was a surprise.

“Cohesion was inevitable from the start,”

Dhruv said.

“This new sungineering has been working because of overwriting, but it was never simply the power of desire of the architects. It has been the desire of every human being. We bypassed trajection and constellation lines, and have gone to the substrate of what trajection means.”

Dhruv took in a shivery breath.

“You want to know why the architects revived? It’s because they are tethering themselves in the overwriting, into this Cohesion instead of their yakshas. This is where we were headed all along. Cohesion is inevitable.”

“Does that mean we will succeed?”

Naila asked.

Does it mean you think this is not my fault? Ahilya thought passively. Dhruv simply shrugged his shoulders. It was enough. Ahilya understood. They had a chance.

She turned back to the sky. The last leaf fell in the Etherium. A startling burst of terror overwhelmed her, what am I doing, what am I doing.

Ahilya dropped into the void, and it embraced her.