Page 51 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)
IRAVAN
He ascended far above the planet, where the air grew thin.
He could still fly with the everpower, and traject the elements enough to breathe, but with every movement, the power leaked out of him, the wound of separation from the core tree making him wheeze. He’d ascended so he wouldn’t be distracted by the planetrage, but he had only minutes until the everpower totally left him. Then, he would tumble to the earth and the planetrage would take him. Shocking to think that everything hinged on only a few minutes. The chance to repair reality itself. He laughed, but tears ran down his cheeks. What could one man do? Ahilya was pushing her faith in him to a point of insanity.
She was there down below, along with the survivors who would soon become her. Iravan stared at the curve of the horizon, the orange-golden hues of the planet and the cascading, brilliant storm. He stared beyond the planet at his first real glimpse of the universe, a billion stars filling his vision. Ahilya prepared humanity, but they would not win this if he did not find a way. And so, Iravan tried.
Embedded in the evervision, he studied reality. Once, the Moment had appeared as its own entity alongside the Deepness and Etherium—three interdimensional realities that ran parallel to each other. The Moment had resembled a globule of twinkling stars, the Deepness a cavern of darkness, and, superimposed through them, the Etherium had changed constantly, finally becoming a realm where his past lives had blinked at him.
With the collapse of reality, and dissolution imminent, the three universes blended into each other in what Ahilya had thought of as the allvision. He saw the collapse as a sludge of wavy light, shards of the Moment floating in pinpoints, colliding with a curving, melting darkness that was undoubtedly the Deepness. Isolated edges of torn-off stars floated everywhere. Frayed constellation lines hung loose in a mockery of some architect’s will. Lights blinked and darkened, and rubble-filled dust swam from the erosion of reality. Iravan looked into the allvision and saw space debris—light bending in unusual ways, tripping his mind, and lava that echoed into amazing fractals. Shadows lurked everywhere, warping into cadences of wispy brightness. In the blending of the Etherium, he saw the councilors of Irshar, and Ahilya, talking around a table, as if they were right next to him. He wondered if they would hear him if he spoke.
Focusing, Iravan tried to interpret only the Moment.
Architects always understood the Moment as a plane of consciousness. Dissolution had proven without doubt that it was an anchor of reality. Yet the Moment was so much more than either of those things.
He stared at the broken universe, and willed it to make sense to his eyes. For him—and him alone—the Moment flickered.
It became a tapestry of broken shards, reminiscent of bio-nodes. In one pane, Iravan saw Nidhirv laughing with Vishwam. Bhaskar smiled in another, mending a basket. Agni read a scroll lazily in yet another. On and on, a million images of his other lives. And there—as himself too, in Nakshar’s solar lab talking to Dhruv as they exchanged sungineering trackers. As he screamed within a nest of magnaroot, while Oam shuddered in fear. As he and Ahilya lay in each other’s arms, so much younger.
Iravan saw himself, but he saw other people too. Ahilya saying goodbye to Eskayra in one frozen pane. Weeping silently in Nakshar’s library, anxious because of his long punishing silence. Running through the ashram with her sister Tariya, the both of them laughing little girls.
He had summoned the Moment from the allvision, but this—this still seemed too reminiscent of the Etherium. Did that then mean that he could not repair the Moment at all? That it was too late, that the messy sludge of reality was too far gone to correct? The Moment should have shown him possibilities of consciousness—a frozen state of being—but this was a dissection of events that had occurred, or were about to.
He focused on a group of images showing the assimilation of humanity with the Virohi-vriksh happening now. If now was a word that could be used when time appeared as discrete pearls. When any narrative was meaningless. When the past, present, and future were just moments.
Not just moments, he corrected. This is the Moment.
Seen in a way he had never before.
He was overtaken by awe.
Responding to his will, the Moment was showing him what it was, finally. A reality with a relationship to time. Had the early architects known this? It was called the Moment; of course, it was related to time. Of course, it resembled the Etherium. Consciousnesses were merging in a way they never had because of dissolution. Architects had always connected one possibility to another within the Moment using constellation lines, and in doing so, had impacted reality, changing a plant’s state of being. But now, during dissolution, the remains of the Moment were merging different star-shards. Consciousness was already climbing to its next state of being. Nothing he did now would return things to the way they were.
A deep sadness filled Iravan. In his hubris, he had destroyed reality, yet perhaps there was no other way this could have gone. The Moment had weakened since the very first investiture of the Virohi into an architect, and each subsequent earthrage had continued to weaken it. This dissolution was more than a thousand years in the making.
He gathered the everpower to him like a cloak. To repair the Moment—in whatever way he could—would mean interfering with what the universe was trying to balance. He was about to put his fingers into this messy sludge and pry pieces of reality apart, hoping the puzzle pieces would lock into their earlier form on their own, as an aspect of retained memory. Doing so could prove disastrous.
But he had made a promise to Ahilya, and it was no longer his decision alone. Whether he acted or not, humanity was forever changed. They were already at the end of the line—all they had were bad choices. He would let the rest of them make the decision of what they wanted to be. He would let them find their place in the world in the way they saw fit, not the way he did, with his desire to make amends. After all, wasn’t that what Ahilya had asked of him all those days ago, when she’d marched into the Garden to bind him with a heartpoison bracelet?
The allvision beckoned to him, reality translating into blinks.
Iravan’s past lives circled him, but this time at a distance. Their eyes were silver, and he knew the falcon had contaminated them fully, corrupting them with its hate. It was waiting for him to make his move, so it could make its own.
You weren’t always like this, Iravan thought to his past. You made choices of love before. He watched Nidhirv, Askavetra, Bhaskar and the others in his third vision, but the third vision was slipping with the collapse of reality. His past lives crowded him, reading his intent.
Iravan took a deep breath. If he was to fix the Moment, he would have to begin with himself.
As an architect, that was essential—his will needed to be pure and unshakeable. His past lives still lived within him, driven by the falcon-yaksha. If he did not combat their resistance first, whatever he wished to do could be undone by his own self. A slip while he tried to pry one consciousness apart from another, a small flicker of his fingers while he teased apart the fragments… These mistakes could ruin everything. What he intended needed the precision of a surgeon, and he had one chance, and one alone. Iravan could not afford to give control to any of his past lives in those instants of reckoning.
Besides, he’d already told Ahilya he needed to neutralize the falcon. It was too powerful with the subsumed power of all the other yakshas. It battled inside him, roaring to take control, attempting to grip the everpower with steely talons as he clutched it with his crumbling fingernails.
Wrapped in the everpower, Iravan began projecting his past outward like he’d done before. Dust rippled around him in the atmosphere, space debris and vapor misting and coalescing. Figures appeared in front of him, the faded forms of Mohini, Askavetra, Bhaskar, Agni, and then Nidhirv. If he could only break the falcon’s control of them then he could ensure the falcon would not interfere.
The yaksha anticipated him snatching at the projections. Though Iravan knew it would occur, a grunt escaped him.
Stars in front of him blinked, rearranging themselves into a gateway, and beyond it a massive, labyrinthine maze that extended above and below him as if it were a sungineering hologram. Awe filled Iravan because he knew this maze was his consciousness. It glittered like glass, walls rising in front of him, rippling with memory. Standing within the Moment, he stared at a million collected panes, iridescent and colorful images rushing across the glass surfaces, each image showing him a version of himself.
A smile twisted his lips. He had seen his consciousness as a maze before. This was an invitation, an acceptance of the falcon to finally find the victor between them. Only one of them would emerge; only one would hold the reins of this consciousness they both shared. We come to it again, he thought. How many times had he done this? First with the Resonance, then with the falcon-proper, and now this. Of course, he had not won by subsuming the falcon-yaksha, he could see that now. This time, he had arrived at their last battle.
He sensed the falcon’s laughter, and for a brief instant Iravan felt a deep affection for the creature. For thousands of years they had circled each other. This was a battle so long coming. What would the yaksha unleash on him that he had not already endured?
There was no way forward but one.
Iravan entered the maze.