Page 52 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)
AHILYA
The noise swept over her, horrifying her and making her scream, until she realized it came from her. Even so, she could not stop—she was the noise, and the cacophony filled her mind, the worst memories unmooring her. A collective vision of the Conclave falling to the jungle. Bodies tumbling everywhere, ripped away—and within the mass of combined consciousness, an absence like a tearing of her limbs. Panic filled her throat, and the screaming stopped just for an instant because she could not get the sounds out—
* * *
Silence.
* * *
Then a ringing sound, shrill and continuous.
* * *
Her movements were slow… wooden. She couldn’t remember where she was. Who she was.
* * *
She stood in a forest. Her bare toes grazed the soil. Wet earth squelched under her feet. The shrill sound echoed from all directions. Something was rushing through the forest with the force of a storm. A dark mass blinked in the distance, hurtling toward her. She squinted, trying to understand it. Leaves cascaded from the trees, scraping off branches, and roots withered into dust, so that suddenly she stood on an empty plain. All around her, the forest was depleting, leaves that had fallen only seconds ago now rising higher and higher. They became a wall, a wave, rearing upon itself, and suddenly she realized—this was what that black mass was. A hurricane of leaves that had been rushing toward her, that was now upon her—but no, not leaves.
Faces. The leaf-wave contained a thousand faces, all twisted in agony, pain, pain, pain.
She backed away, stumbling, horrified. The screams from those faces came to her, and she recognized their voices—her sister, her friends, her family.
Ahilya turned and ran, but there was no escape from this. The wave rose higher, leaves swirling within it, its crash over her imminent. The wave rushed her, but she snatched at herself desperately—
* * *
Splashing water.
She was in a small, deep pool.
She was in Nakshar. In some corner of her mind, she knew this was a memory. That her mind was constructing sense in a slipping landscape of meaning. She blinked again, wiping her nose with her wet hands, and saw her legs underwater.
Next to her, Tariya appeared, spitting water, her eyes terrified. Tariya looked no older than ten, her hair sticking to her face and neck, her big eyes wide.
“What do we do?”
she gasped.
“What do we do?”
This was a mistake. We should not have attempted this. The two sisters had gone swimming in one of Nakshar’s pools, but they’d been warned by their parents not to do so because the architecture of the ashram was changing. The girls were non-architects, they would not be seen in the council chambers through the sungineering devices. I’ve killed us, Ahilya thought, because it had been her idea. Of course, it had been her idea. But it was not the pool she feared. It was a rising wave, with strange sounds of horror rising from it.
She kicked her legs, relentlessly, her arms reaching toward her sister as the water whirled around them. Tariya’s breath gasped in Ahilya’s ears—
* * *
And it was the gasp of all of them, the sum total of humanity.
Time stood still.
She was back in the forest.
She was the forest, for the forest was that wave of leaves, hurtling mindlessly through the landscape of the Etherium, and she was now within the wave. Sensation grew confused, strange details popping out of oblivion. The grain of wood visible on parchment, blooming into a tree. A cracked mirror, radiating endless light. A string of pink yarn unravelling on a sari. A field of stars, littered with constellation lines. And through it all, screaming, endless weeping.
It was too much. Too much information. Too many emotions.
She lost track of herself, falling into one memory then another, again and again—but something tugged her up back, a glimpse of what she had been, sungineering equipment hanging off her, an archaeologist heading for an expedition.
the Virohi asked, a question to remind her. To confirm who they were.
Ahilya, she thought. She remembered.
She wrenched her eyes open, and the courtyard chamber that she and the others were in melded, as if she were viewing it through liquid glass. Next to her, Eskayra’s gaze was glassy, her mouth open in an O. Dhruv and Naila were frozen too—but as her visions tilted, Dhruv, Naila, and Eskayra turned to her, their eyes shining.
She felt their fingers touch hers.
In a blink, they were next to her in the mindless wave of memories, their silhouettes misty and shadowy but there. Roots grew around the courtyard, wrapping around the three of them, climbing over their limbs, anchoring around their waists, holding. Another startling memory rushed through Ahilya, of Nakshar landing within the jungle during a false lull, all of them breathing together, desiring the very same thing. Survival. Safety. Led by her, they all saw the same memory, the will of the city attuning within them, their consciousness aligning.
Synchronicity unraveled from her, blending into her friends and beyond. She felt her movements mimicked, her thoughts mirrored, a dance of neurons firing from a thousand brains, all singing the same song, all echoing the same raga of oneness.
Across the new city, tree roots rushed, wrapping the citizens within them. The canopy of the vriksh elongated and thickened, breathing, and roots hurtled with more speed and ferocity. She—they—this Cohesion—saw people huddling together within buildings, arms wrapped around each other, and the roots of Cohesion surged up through cracking floors, binding them to it. Some fought the cocooning, but most of them closed their eyes, letting the tree take them.
Were we right? Ahilya wondered. Surely, everyone must feel the peace of oneness.
Protection, the tree whispered, and all these thoughts were the sound of the humanity, and the Virohi, and a thousand consciousnesses combined.
Arms grasped and anchored, leaves growing over the roots, nests growing to secure men, women, and children within them. With each anchoring, shadows appeared in the Etherium with her as the vriksh’s roots raced over every living creature within the city.
With the eyes of a thousand people, and the vision of the roots clenching the earth, Ahilya saw everything.
The ashram—this amalgamation of the new city, Irshar, and the Garden—resembled an orb. From top to bottom, the vriksh contained it. The shield of dust had hardened into bark, crisscrossed with veins of branches, becoming stronger than its parts. In Ahilya’s mind, this new ashram looked like Nakshar—a design that Iravan had once created. Diamond-like, heart-strong, embedded with the consciousness of every living thing this planet contained—all standing together as one entity. She heard the planet’s shriek at this audacity.
Understanding cascaded into Ahilya. There had always been two parts of it, memories entangling with consciousness. As more and more architects appeared within the Cohesion, their knowledge poured into her—and she saw. Just as the Moment could show possibilities of human consciousnesses as stars, and the existence of architects as dust-motes, this Etherium showed the shadows as controllers, and the leaves of memories as something that could be controlled. The image tilted almost into a star-filled universe of the Moment, forced by the combined consciousness of the architects, before she righted it back into the forest.
Ahilya held her awareness tightly. She could not let the architects take charge of it. It had to be her, lest this Cohesion take them irrevocably. It had to be her, or there would be no coming back from this.
I have to guide this, she thought, trying not to fear it.
You already have, the construct whispered, reassuring her.
Ahilya’s eyes widened. She knew it was true. Still, she wavered. If she gave in now, there would be no return. What if this Cohesion left them all mindless? What if they imploded?
Cohesion is inevitable, Dhruv whispered to her.
She heard the planetrage come, watched the rumbles of earth, the tsunami of storm head toward the last orb of survival in the planet.
Surrender, Cohesion whispered, and Ahilya saw the intention of the planet to annihilate this pestilence.
Surrender, Cohesion whispered, nudging her, for if she did not give in now, they would not endure.
Surrender, Cohesion whispered, urgency across its surface.
Ahilya surrendered.