Page 73 of The Surviving Sky
themselves in their true forms-h-a-t-t-e-r-i-n-g; and Iravan screamed in useless sorrow; a warning, a lament, a wail.
He cleaved open their heart.
The Resonance cradled him in its winged flaps.
His vision focused as all his lives, all his memories, drew down tothispoint in time. He screamed in rebellion, in fury and agony, and the spiralweed choking him in the library exploded into tiny shards.
Iravan dropped to the alcove floor on his knees.
Power surged throughhim—notthe power oftrajection—thiswas something else, familiar, intoxicating.
He looked up at the spiralweed, his teeth bloody. Light had returned to the alcove, but it was lighthegenerated, his skin glowing blue-green.
The spiralweed changed its shape.
In a blink, its bubbling monstrous mass retracted. A thick trunk shot up from floor to ceiling as though the weed was bracing itself against the smashed alcove. The spiralweed hardened. Sharp, flat leaves grew over its trunk like lethal blades.
A part of Iravan watched in shock; he had never seen a plant change its form so completely. Another part registered in grimness: the weed was preparing to attack, only now truly, andhewas fragile,hewould not live.
The spiralweed trunk spun, unwrapping.
A bladed leaf shot out at Iravan, missed him by inches, and embedded in the wall behind.
Iravan moved, unaware he was moving, as more blades shot out from the trunk, axe-like, whipping past his hair, slashing his kurta, narrowly missing his skin. He smashed into a wall, then ducked and spun, falling on all fours.
The power still surged through him, but he didn’t know how to use it, and a roar of anger sounded in his mind.
Help me, he growled, and the fury intensified.
His limbs reacted of their own accord. His body lifted, off the floor again, but this time as though invisible wings were trying to fly him. His legs kicked; he heard the enraged roar again. Iravan stiffened, his heart thundered, and his body flipped in midair, avoiding another bladed leaf. Trapped within himself, he watched as whatever had roared spun him,flewhim, inelegantly, avoiding the slicing blades.
He couldn’t do this forever.
Iravan reached to enter the Moment, to traject, the only power he knew.
Instead, he realized that he was outside the Moment.
He hadn’t noticed, but his second vision had been an infinite velvety blackness, and the entire universe of the Moment had become a tiny, starry, undulating sphere. He gathered the strange energy coursing through him, patterns of blue-green tattoos lighting his skin, and he screamed, unleashing the power into the globe of the Moment, to destroy the spiralweed, destroy the Moment, destroy itall—
A third power knocked him aside before he could release it.
His stomach dropped.
He spun in the blackness of the non-Moment.
The third presence radiated next tohim—nottheResonance—somethingelseentirely—itsshape rearing, making ready to kick.
A stream of golden light emerged from the third presence, shooting past Iravan into the globe of the Moment, and Iravan knew instinctively, this thing, thisally, had been fighting the spiralweed all this while. This was why the Disc Architects hadn’t reacted yet, why the stars of the Moment hadn’t winked out, why no one in the ashram knew of the attack. This ally had been forming the lone line of defense.
He imitated it, concentrating his power into a similar stream of golden light, merging with the ally’s. The two streams connected, thickened, their combined powershocking—andenough.
In the library alcove, the spiralweed exploded into minuscule shards, scraping Iravan’s skin like a million paper cuts.
He fell to the floor.
The ally spun and crashed into him, thrusting him out of the non-Moment. The scream of fury in his mind changed to one of betrayal; he glimpsed the Resonance flapping angrily in thedarkness—
Then the Resonance and the scream were both gone.
