Page 56 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)
COHESION
Drawing on memories of everything it was made of, Cohesion stood against the planetrage.
It bent their heads, protecting against the rising gale of the planet, as its branches swished around the nest. Wind shrieked, gusting across the cocoons of its people, and a storm razed over the jungle, withering everything in its ravenous path.
It felt the planet’s fury in every inch of them. Rocks rose in the air, hurled at its canopy, but it braced its head and hardened into its strongest form. The sounds were terrifying, akin to a monstrous gnashing of teeth. Water rose from the bowels of the planet, into tides over a thousand feet tall, slamming against the nest of its existence. Within, the people shook in their cocoons, and Cohesion screamed as some of them drowned, winked away from its power. Heat climbed over its skin, burning away the roots, scorching the leaves of protection. Holes appeared within the canopy, and it scrambled, attempting to fill itself with new growth, leaves and shoots bursting hastily to cover the holes. It felt the pain of burning deep in their marrow, and saw the planet fling more fire at them in the form of molten rocks that melted its sap.
Terror and sadness overtook it. Flashes of memory—the pain of separation, the rise to the skies, the final and late acceptance that it had always ever been one people, united at its source as sentient beings. They who had once been called Virohi—the other—they who had been not so different from the complete ones. Something rose in its memory, a glimmer of acceptance, and an echo of blue-green tattoos. We were architects once, it said, and knowledge whispered from within it.
And as the planet hurled its elements at them, large balls of debris smashing against the nest, Cohesion twisted the tree of its body—no longer simply protecting, but attacking, trajecting, in return.
Roots writhed, hurtling outwards from the ashram, smashing into boulders before they could reach the nest. A massive tsunami loomed over them, but the tree sent out an intention and a wall formed to break the wave. Below, more roots anchored into the soil, creating plates of bark, layers upon layers of them strengthening the earth, preventing an erosion. Rocks dashed everywhere, but spears of branches erupted from the tree, impaling the rocks before they could reach the cocoons. The canopy grew thicker, absorbing the worst of the dust, filtering fresher air down to its people while above smoke and dust obscured visibility. Energized by the power of such enormous desire, sungineering drones that had been lying in wait zipped through the air, hurtling like missiles into gigantic debris, disintegrating them into dust.
A hundred ashrams, no a thousand—those from sister cities, and those that once had been subsumed—arose in a crescendo of memory, feeding years of survival back into themselves. Cohesion reared, fighting for its survival, while the planet churned trying to annihilate it. Cohesion lost parts of itself, but it stood too, rooting further. There was terror but there was an exhilarated sense of victory woven through it. The planet was throwing everything it had at it, but Cohesion was holding. It was surviving.