Page 68 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)
AHILYA
She knew her eyes were closed, but somehow she could still see.
She knew she had eyes. That was a good sign.
Ahilya floated within her body, but her body was everywhere.
She felt the hard ground under her back, grass tickling her ears, a soft breeze lifting her hair up from her forehead.
She felt other things too—the tread of her foot over a broken stone.
The sensation of her roots planted deep into the soil.
The movements of plates underneath the earth, and the striations of water somewhere.
The boundaries of her mind extended to the whole planet, and the effect was calming and disorienting.
It was as if she were one of Dhruv’s drones, capable of seeing it all yet focusing and magnifying on one thing at a time, to see it in completion.
She knew if she opened her eyes this sensation would come to a standstill.
This was the last time she would feel this—the certainty permeated her.
She savored her existence in this haze fully.
The moment before birth, she thought. This is what it must feel like.
When she was ready, she finally opened her eyes.
At first, she was confused.
She was staring into the sky, but all she saw was a floating miasma of orange, gray, and blue.
This was another shard of broken reality.
The nightmare had not ended.
She felt a great fear rake over her
Then, the miasma shifted and she glimpsed a rising dawn.
She realized she was looking at clouds.
Gray clouds, not stormy but cleansing.
A soft rain began to pour and she inhaled the scent of petrichor, breathing deeply with her lungs, feeling her chest rise and fall.
She had been everything and everyone, but there was a personal, sacred pleasure in acknowledging her body now, the one she had lived within all her life.
Slowly, she pushed herself up to her elbows.
She was on a hill near a plain of grass, but not too far from her the earth had been ripped by massive craters.
Streams of water trickled into the holes, making deep wells that cascaded into clear ponds.
Humongous rocks the size of mountains lay everywhere, veined with tree roots.
As she watched, grass covered them rapidly.
The rocks grew smaller, until they were reabsorbed by the earth, making the landscape level.
She felt the lilting, cascading flow of movement underneath her, the rock still settling into the soil.
The jungle had completely retreated from where she sat.
She watched it retreat further, far from her plain of grass—finally becoming a separate entity.
She thought she could hear an ocean somewhere.
An ocean, she thought wonderingly.
As an archeologist, she’d always assumed oceans existed well below the surface of the planet, for how else would a jungle thrive without water.
Yet it was astonishing to think that they could now see those oceans.
That they were likely surrounded by them, the whole planet turned inside out and self-correcting into something more inhabitable.
Reality was mending, the principle of physical laws reasserting.
She had woken to a new world, and much of the landscape was different.
She would have to begin anew, trying to understand its climate.
Flowers erupted around her, and Ahilya touched a wild daffodil in a wondrous haze.
There were no bees here yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time.
Life had survived; it was obvious because she was here, living.
Life they’d brought back from the skies on landing, and one that would free itself in this new world.
Around her hill more buds poked out of the ground, so that soon she was surrounded by a field of white flowers.
Ahilya inhaled, breathing in the rain and the unseen ocean.
Her eyes burned with tears of catharsis.
Beyond this startling beauty, the last city of humanity arose.
Irshar, the Garden, whatever they chose to call this dwelling, was far from where she sat, but Ahilya could still see massive spires rising, and pieces of rubble strewn across the city.
People moved along the streets, looking like small dots, but Ahilya sharpened her perception so they loomed in front of her, crying with sorrow and joy, a woman hugging another, others already beginning rescue efforts for those trapped by the wreckage.
The city was a broken mess of roots and branches, and a group of citizens were ripping apart a tree-cage, helping others out from the boughs.
Several citizens appeared unhurt, though dust and earth caked everyone’s faces.
A massive tree rose from the city still in remembrance of the vriksh and Cohesion.
Its trunk was marred down the middle, as if lightning had struck it.
As Ahilya watched, the tree started to wither.
The edges of it grew blurry.
Slowly, slowly, dust cascaded from it.
This last core tree had done all it could.
Now it rested, and Ahilya felt its relief and joy inside her as if it were her own.
She dropped her sharpened perception.
It made her breathless to hold it too long.
She stared at the city, a hunger in her.
There was a synchronicity of movement within it, which seemed so familiar.
As if all the people within were working in tandem, with no need to speak.
As if they could read each other’s thoughts and knew their intents as well as they knew themselves.
Instinctively she knew it was a lingering effect of Cohesion.
If she wanted, perhaps she could reach their awareness, and join it.
But she remained apart for now, merely watching.
She wondered how she had come to be here, all alone on this plain.
She had been a part of the tree, hadn’t she? Reality had melted.
Who or what had righted it?
She couldn’t remember, and she let the questions die.
She simply sat there, feeling at peace, feeling the drizzle.
The rain was light, just enough to melt into her clothes and skin, refreshing her, and she reveled in the silence.
Whatever was occurring with the synchronicity felt natural.
Her third vision seemed to have faded away.
For that too, Ahilya was grateful.
Eventually she became aware that she was not alone.
Ahilya turned her head and saw, not a few feet away, another body lying spreadeagled on his back.
Iravan stared up at the sky, tears leaking from the sides of his face.
His breathing was slow and he didn’t make a move toward her, though one hand was outstretched in her direction, as if only minutes ago they had been touching each other.
His other palm lay loosely curled.
Something shone inside it, like the tiniest, most precious pearl.
He did not seem to notice her, and she took her time, not seeking his attention, but merely content to study him.
He looked… changed.
Pieces of him were familiar, taken from different times in his life, as if reality had been unable to decide which one was really Iravan.
He was just as handsome as ever, his dark skin the same almost-black.
His hair was no longer silvery though—instead, his salt-and-pepper locks had returned, except a shock of bright gray fell across his forehead as if to declare to everyone that he was not the man from Nakshar, but someone else, someone evolved.
His clothes were the black of an Ecstatic, but they were riddled with the slashes of the brightest white.
Reality had solidified him into this image, his choices and coercion coexisting.
Ahilya did not know what it meant for his future.
He turned slowly toward her, and she saw then that his eyes were black again.
The silver was gone, but when she looked deeper, she thought she could see sparks of gray still lurking inside.
His fingers twitched toward her, and slowly he sat up.
Ahilya extended her hand.
She touched him, and loosely he stroked her palm.
“Are you all right?”
she asked softly
“No,”
he said. Then after a long time, after a deep, shaky breath.
“Yes. Yes. Are you?”
She could not form the words, but he seemed to understand. Iravan nodded, and his eyes returned to the sky. Tears still fell down his face, but either he did not notice them or he did not care to wipe them.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
“Is it over?”
he finally whispered.
“It’s over,”
she confirmed.
“Then we survived.”
She looked back to the city, where more people released others from the remains of the battle.
“Many of us, yes. Did reality?”
It was a foolish question perhaps, but Ahilya had experienced too much to not ask it.
“I—I think so,”
he said.
“Do you remember much?”
Wisps of memories floated across her mind. The ferocity of the planetrage. The unity of Cohesion. The utter reality-shattering presence of dissolution that made her chest heave with wrongness. And then, beyond it, a terrifying, massive, utterly inhuman sentience.
“That awareness,”
Ahilya said, choking.
“What was it?”
Iravan turned to her, and there was fresh awe and shock in his eyes.
“I—I don’t know. Did it feel like… What did it feel like to you?”
She tried to remember. The unspeakable, gargantuan awareness, so full of power that power itself was a small word for it, crushing her, surrounding her, then mirroring her.
“It felt like a great eye,”
she whispered.
“Indifferent, immense, terrifying and benevolent, all at once. I felt every inch of myself, every pore, but more than that.”
It was hard to explain, even to him. The definition of who she was had expanded, beyond Cohesion into the whole universe. She felt it inside her, an unbearable emptiness that felt so very full too.
“I was everything,”
she said, at last.
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you feel it too?”
“Yes,”
he said again. “Yes.”
They fell into silence, each of them lost to their thoughts. Iravan’s fingers skated over hers, and she gripped them tightly. Perhaps he was feeling the same thing she was. How was one to recover from such an experience? She stared into the sky, mirroring him, rain falling on her, and for an instant she saw beyond the reaches of the planet into a kaleidoscope of stars, the rhythms of the universe moving to the cadence of a personal, echoing, everlasting song. Ahilya wanted to speak, to shift the mood, but she felt caught in the moment. She wanted to tear apart from it, but she was too absorbed. A profound sense of immensity enveloped her, cushioning her, and she knew that she would never be the same again.
When Iravan spoke, it was a comfort.
His voice was husky, as if it was only supreme will that wrenched the words from him.
“What happened to the Virohi?”
he rasped.
“I saw them, and…”
“They’re free,”
she said, knowing it only when she spoke it. The words came easier now that she’d begun. The immense presence drifted away, though she knew she could be absorbed by it if she only allowed herself to.
“I don’t understand how,”
she continued.
“but the Virohi became one with that awareness. They saw their true form.”
“And with them, so did we,”
he murmured.
“So did we.”
She nodded.
“I—I did not know that we could become something like that.”
She felt for the awareness, and it was a comfort to know that she could wrap herself in it. We are so much more than we’ve ever known, she thought. Why did we forget this? Why did we never seek to know this? Tears gushed down her face, and she wiped them away, her breath catching. She had always sought an expansion of her identity in hoping to become like the architects. She’d seen the familiarity of the Virohi, found them to resonate with her. She had never imagined this.
“That immensity…”
she said.
“We saw—we became—the universe.”
“Yes.”
“And the Virohi allowed me to see the universe in this way?”
Ahilya asked, grasping for understanding.
Iravan nodded slowly.
“In a way, you allowed each other. It couldn’t have happened without you. You were right about the Virohi. You said they were attracted to the Moment, and the Moment has ever been a universe. The Virohi were cosmic creatures, their consciousness as large as a universe too, and it was no coincidence they found form in the Moment, to split within it to become architects and yakshas. They have been seeking that form, a thing that is not truly a form at all, so massive and all-consuming that it is everywhere and everything. They destroyed each Moment of other planets, always seeking, never finding. When they finally found it, they showed it to you. For you have been a part of them ever since you gave them your identity.”
“Then this vision of the universe was their gift to me in return?”
“No more or less than your understanding of them was your gift to them,”
Iravan said, smiling a little.
“The Virohi evolved because of you, because you saw them as one of you. You gave them your form, your memories, and you saw them as worthy of protection from the very beginning. You alone could have done something like this, because of the kind of person you are. On their own, the Virohi were on a doomed mission. Sooner or later, they would have destroyed the whole universe, thousands of planets, all because they would have been unable to find their universal form. Sooner or later, they would have devolved into their worst versions. But with you… You stopped them and freed them by embracing them.”
Iravan’s voice was quiet, but still the immensity of what he was saying terrified her. Ahilya’s thoughts buzzed. He was not speaking of the Virohi alone. He was speaking of himself, and the redemption she had given both him and the cosmic creatures. She had helped the Virohi when no one would—helped Iravan when no one would—but Cohesion had helped her. Without the others, she would have been able to do nothing—she could see that now, for all of the journey she had taken to get here. How close they had all come to disintegrating.
So many steps and missteps, she thought. She was grateful she did not know the immensity of her responsibility in the beginning. Her fingers curled around the heartpoison bracelet still on her wrist, and it came apart in her hands, crumbling into ash. Her mission fulfilled, her vow complete. To release the Virohi, and to give them to Iravan, share them with him in a way.
“If the Virohi gave me this access to the universe,”
she said haltingly.
“then how did you experience it too? You were disconnected from the Virohi. You were never part of Cohesion. But I felt you too.”
“I came to it from a different path,”
he said softly.
“I think a part of me always wanted erasure. I just did not understand the kind of erasure I sought. I thought erasure meant a meaninglessness of life, no significance and value to anything we did. As an architect, I wished freedom from the hold everything had over me, my past, my future, all the expectations I’ve lived with, my own and those of others. But that was never the erasure I truly sought. I sought this—the ability to be nothing, while being everything all at once.”
He fell into silence. Ahilya had promised the council of Irshar she would bring Iravan erasure, but she hadn’t known the truth of that promise. She recalled what Basav had told her about Ecstatics and their capital desire. It is about fulfilling a need. Until it is fulfilled, the Ecstatic Architect can never be free.
And that freedom—in the end, that is the only thing an Ecstatic needs.
They knew, she thought. The architects of the old knew. Perhaps Basav had forgotten what that freedom meant, or maybe he hadn’t known, but the early architects did.
Iravan seemed to be following the same thought.
“I remember vestiges,”
he said, his fingertips flickering on his cheeks as if he could recapture the images.
“Memories of memories, too shaded to make any sense. I questioned what happened to Ecstatics in their last life, those who united and subsumed their yakshas, but I think I understand now. In Nidhirv’s time, they reunited with their yakshas freely, and society was in balance. It was bred into their philosophy to attain that universal form, and I think their capital desires had been one thing and one thing alone, wrought by their culture. Their capital desire was for unity, nothing beyond that, a fulfillment that occurred when they found their yakshas, instantaneously. I don’t know for sure, I am disconnected from my past lives now, but I think for them unity and subsummation with their yakshas happened together. Their combined desire was reborn back into the universe, the same way they would bring the Virohi into birth, and the body of both yakshas and architects would nourish the soil in a voluntary act of death. The true meaning and purpose of an ashram. To return to the fold, to the universe’s embrace.”
Ahilya imagined it, as if she were seeing all this in one of those ancient architect records like a picture. An architect looking up at the sky. A universe wheeling above, stars and light brightening, but behind it the energy of that immense consciousness, breathing the same breath as the architects.
“To do such a thing,”
she breathed.
“We have experienced it now too, but to think such a thing commonplace…”
It brought tears to her eyes. How much had been lost and forgotten.
“They had tremendous power back then,”
Iravan said.
“You know the kinds of trajection they could do, things we could never do in our airborne ashrams—do you remember we saw amazing trajection back in those first carvings within the habitat? I never understood how much power they had then, but trajection is a matter of will, and their will, their consciousness, their culture, was more unified than ours. Nidhirv was a being of great power, all architects back then had been. We were not, so when all of you became Cohesion, your mind unified by it, a single strengthened thing, you—Ahilya—mimicked what the early architects always did. Though you separated from Cohesion, you found the strength to fold your consciousness into the universe, all in the pursuit of knowing yourself, evolving and freeing yourself. The Virohi used this event to finally achieve that which they were meant to do from the very start.”
“The early architects did it unto death, though,”
she murmured.
“We didn’t die.”
“You almost did,”
Iravan said, reminding her quietly.
“And some parts of you did. Something must always die for there to be a new birth.”
Ahilya looked to the city, and the remnants of the vriksh. The tree was gone now, ruptured from the outside, still slowly withering into ash. The vriksh had protected her. It had completed her. Containing all of humanity, it had cushioned her from everything that had threatened to take her under, reminding her that people and their memories were fleeting, but this shared tradition—this immense, beautiful, shared experience—was still hers to tap into.
She and Iravan had changed their culture and their species irrevocably. Birth and death had always been central to their lives, but how far they had taken it. From their arguments for a child, to the one they had almost borne, to this—a step taken for all of them.
She still felt the cadence with the rest of humanity, the accord of movement, the harmony of thought. Each of them their own person, but moving in synchronization. Perhaps the withering of the tree was a gift. To take with them into the world what the tree contained inside. The past was gone. Maybe in this changed world, there was comfort in that.
“Then the Virohi are in the universe now,”
she said softly.
“The Virohi are the universe now.”
“Yes.”
“But then—”
A horrible thought struck her, as she recalled the worst of what she had been. The worse of what humanity had been.
“Their infection, and our hatred—did we harm—did we contaminate—”
The words slipped from her. She couldn’t complete her thought, horrified.
Iravan shook his head.
“Infinity absorbing infinity,”
he said softly.
“You didn’t harm the universe. You could not.”
It was perhaps deeply arrogant and presumptuous that she should think that she, this small insignificant thing, could hurt the universe, but Iravan did not laugh at her. He took her hand in his, interlacing their fingers, and squeezed.
“Take comfort,”
he said softly.
“They did this back in Nidhirv’s time too. This was the purpose of an ashram. You did not change it. You returned the cosmic creatures to their home. Manav knew it, I think. Awakening occurs beyond time, he wrote in his poetry. He must have known of this true purpose of an Ecstatic. The Moment is repaired, or perhaps gone altogether, submerged into that ocean of awareness. I can’t know, but I don’t sense it anymore, neither that nor the Deepness. I think it is a sign—architects don’t need to sense it anymore, much like the complete beings, because we don’t need to manipulate those realms anymore toward our own unity. We have achieved that unity, and now birth and rebirth will occur as they always have. Human beings will continue to reincarnate. We will all of us finally be well and truly complete.”
Iravan had spoken of Manav’s poetry before, and she had her own memories of it, from a time she had held Bharavi’s book. She could feel his wonder in his words, this man who had worried about Bharavi’s rebirth too. If all he said was true, then she would be born again, this time with no need to traject or seek her yaksha, but complete, right from birth.
Balance is an unheard rhythm, Ahilya thought, remembering. We continue to live, in undying separate illusions. She had seen that poetry back when Bharavi’s book had been in her care. Iravan had studied it, mentioned the lines to her long ago too, when they’d been trying to work together in Nakshar to save Nakshar. She understood now finally what the words meant. Manav had lamented the separation of people—of architects, non-architects, of all consciousness from the consciousness of the universe. Yet people were not divorced anymore from themselves and each other. Cohesion had come to an end, but their minds had aligned in amazing ways, human finally in all their humanity. Perhaps Manav had survived the planetrage. If so, she would go to him. She would tell him they’d won. Perhaps he would be proud.
“Do you think Manav could have imagined all of this would occur?”
she asked softly.
Iravan sighed deeply.
“He could not have. So much of this occurred because of one slip, one monumental choice. But Manav is—has always been—more complicated than any of us could guess. He came to my rescue through his yakshas twice, and I imagined him to have more than one yaksha, but I never could imagine why. I think I understand now. Manav sought freedom from his capital desire too—a desire that had imprisoned him for lifetimes. It was that which split his yaksha into two in the first place, perhaps in a lifetime lived long ago. Instead of fulfilling one desire, he found a way to break the desire down. Architects have been defined by our need to control the world, but Manav tried to simply understand. I wish to be like that myself dearly.”
“We lost so much knowledge,”
she said.
“Because for some reason, they outlawed Ecstasy long ago. Because they upset that balance, and stopped returning to the universe what they had taken. If things had only gone that way, Manav would never have had to split his capital desire. The cosmic creatures would never have unleashed such destruction.”
“They outlawed Ecstasy because of me,”
Iravan said.
“Because of me and Manav, in a way. It was Nidhirv and Vishwam who envisioned a path of divergence first, away from the culture of their ashram. They could not have known where it would lead, and perhaps they were not the only people to think this way, perhaps there were other pressures of the time too. But the change occurred because of a marriage Manav and I shared once.”
His voice trembled, and tears filled his eyes.
“It is a knowledge that will haunt me for the rest of my days.”
Ahilya stared at him, shocked. To think that Manav had been associated with Iravan through lifetimes. To think that they had followed each other through so many cycles of consciousness.
“If Manav is Vishwam reborn,”
she said in a low voice.
“Does it mean you two were destined to be together?”
She could hear her own distress, but Iravan’s hand clutched hers tighter.
“No,”
he whispered.
“No, that’s not how birth and rebirth work. Bharavi studied these things, as did Manav, as did I. Once in a different time, Nidhirv and Vishwam were married, they were lovers, they made vows—strong vows to each other, as strong as the ones you and I did. And perhaps Vishwam’s desire to find Nidhirv was so great, carving such a deep imprint into Vishwam’s own consciousness, that it resembled a capital desire. It is what led his future incarnations to always hover around Nidhirv’s consciousness. Around my consciousness. That is why he protected me—one half of him wishing for freedom from everything, the other half compelled to keep me safe. It does not mean that Manav and I were destined for each other, only that we shared a past. Manav had a family, sons and daughter, and he was very much in love with his spouse. Vishwam—from another life—could not be allowed to dictate that. The dead should not be allowed to hold the living hostage.”
Iravan breathed in deeply.
“It is another thing I have learned, no longer a hostage to my own capital desire. We are free, Ahilya. We are free.”
The explanation reverberated in Ahilya’s mind for long seconds. She squeezed his hand, and he returned the gesture, then the both of them fell still again.
“We’ve woken to a strange world,”
she whispered finally.
“One rich with possibility again,”
he answered, and she knew what he meant. Everdust had once been depleted, and with it possibility had left the world, but everdust had come into being when two halves became a whole. Not the half of yakshas and architects like they’d imagined before, but that of the Virohi and the universe. She’d worked this out herself in the last few minutes.
“We had it wrong,”
she said, nodding.
“The architects who built the habitat, they didn’t just stop the earthrages and trap the Virohi in the Moment. They must have released the Virohi into the universe. That is how they created everdust.”
“Yes,”
Iravan said, sighing.
“I think so too. That is why I never found another cosmic creature trapped in the Moment other than the one that you and I trapped. Those ancient architects and citizens understood and remembered what so many generations before them didn’t. Perhaps they used a similar method to Cohesion. Everdust has returned to our world now, though we cannot use it. Trajection is finally over.”
A strange emotion lurked underneath his words. Ahilya wondered if it was regret—he could have done so much with the manipulation of possibility—but Iravan’s face was relaxed. His other palm curved protectively around whatever he was holding. The blade of stone around his neck was missing. He’d likely used it in his repair of the Moment.
“You said your past lives are cut off from you,”
she said.
“Then is the falcon gone?”
“The falcon and all the yakshas were released with the Virohi,”
he confirmed.
“For you it was an embracing. For me, negation, a release of all that I once was. In the end, it is the the same thing.”
“Nothing,”
she said.
“And everything.”
He only smiled at this echo of his own words. The breeze lifted the shock of silver hair from his face, and he breathed deeply, closing his eyes. Ahilya looked to the city in front of her and the jungle beyond, and her heart began to race, in recognition of the great inevitability. She couldn’t bear to see him now, in all his beauty and honesty. He had looked like this all that time ago when they’d married each other. This was the man she loved, and he was here now with her, finally. Finally.
“There is so much still to do,”
she murmured.
“Cohesion has fragmented though I still feel a resonance with it.”
She saw him smile from the corner of her eye, and Ahilya smiled too, at her use of this word.
“We are changed as a species in some profound way. I don’t know in what form, but I think all of us understand each other better. If trajection is truly gone now, then we will need another form of energy. I suppose we can build something from all this.”
She did turn to him then, and saw that he was smiling fondly. Iravan lifted her hand, his fingers still laced within hers, and kissed her softly.
Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he let go.
“Eskayra is waiting for you, I think,”
he said softly.
“Yes.”
“And you want to go to her, don’t you?”
Did she? Surely, if Eskayra was alive, she would be hunting the city for her, waiting for her. Perhaps the others too—Naila and Dhruv and Chaiyya, maybe even Basav. She thought of Esk’s relief. She thought of the future they could now have. She imagined it was Esk’s hand in hers, and then she saw Iravan. The high cheekbones, the curling hair, and his eyes that still leaked with intermittent tears. Everything she had experienced, and endured, and become, all of it had occurred with this man restored to her. If there had ever been any hope for them, this is where it all started. This is where it all returned.
“What do you want?”
she finally asked.
Iravan grinned, soft and boyish, full of dry amusement. “Me?”
he said lightly.
“Ever the same thing, my dear. Children, and domesticity, and a life with you. If I could, I would live forever as your husband. That is what I hoped to do with the blade of pure possibility. But I don’t think you want that, and I don’t think you should. I am not sure I should either. I have only come to an understanding of myself now. I need time to gather my pieces, examine which are from the past, which are really mine. It is something I should have done a long time ago.”
So much had changed, but in some ways he had not. This was an Iravan answer, through and through. Ahilya was grateful. It could not be any other way, but she did not want to hurt him.
“You will be all right then?”
she asked.
“I will.”
“What will you do?”
Iravan lay back, his head resting on his hands as he gazed at the sunlit sky. She thought she could see the entire universe shining in his eyes, a kaleidoscope of stars.
“I think,”
he said softly.
“I think I will lay here a time.”
She stared at the image of this man, handsome and free for the first time ever. Her heart brimmed with so much love, that she thought she might explode. Before she could change her mind, Ahilya hurried away, descending the hill.
She was near the bottom when she heard his voice again, drifting on the breeze. A last question, one that caught her by surprise.
“Wait. I need to know. Do you regret it?”
Ahilya did not turn back, but she stopped. Images cascaded over her, of the many years, and the many seasons she and Iravan had gone through.
“Several things,”
she whispered finally.
“But not you. Never you.”
She heard a soft huff of laughter, part awe, part disbelief. He was there, a part of her now. Just as she was of him. Nothing would erase that.
Ahilya walked down the hill, toward her new beginning.