Page 115 of The Surviving Sky
“You weren’t the only one being obtuse,” she said. “I always thought it was non-plant architecture, something the humans leftbehind—non-architects.But maybe itistrajection-related afterall—justnot made byhumanarchitects. It’s why we didn’t stay in the jungle. Flight occurred to escape from the yakshas, these creatures that were superior tous…”
She trailed off and grew still, her eyes unseeing before her. Iravan stared at her, the sheer beauty of her, the fierce intelligence, a master at work. How could he ever have thought her incapable of the council? He had dropped the seeds, but she had built an entire explanation out of it, as though waiting for the chance. He forced himself away from the burning Resonance, forced himself to see her, the only thing that mattered. The two paths blinked at him; he saw himself take astep—
Then Ahilya caught his gaze and shook herself. “This is the farthest I’ve come,” she said, laughing softly. “I could build several hypotheses just off this alone, even if I’d have to rearrange my assumptions. If I had proof of some kind, it would change everything.”
“Youdohave proof,” Iravan said quietly. “It’s been staring at us from the very beginning.”
She tilted her head, curious, and Iravan made a gesture with his hand.
“Spiralweed,” he said. He had considered it, on and off, as he’d thought of how the plant had reacted to him in the library and to Bharavi in the deathcage, similar but not the same. “Spiralweed evolved to feed off trajection, but there are no trajecting ashrams down there. Then how did it evolve to do that over so many earthrages? How did it survive in the jungle? It would needtrajection—andit is trajection the yakshas supply.”
“And that’s how the elephant-tracker charged itself so mysteriously,” she said, nodding. “It wasn’tmysterious—we’vebeen blind. The tracker was being charged by theelephant-yaksha—”But Ahilya cut herself off, a frown drawing on her face. “No, that won’t work. The tracker charged during Bharavi’s Ecstasy, too. It’s not as though there was a yakshainNakshar.”
“No,” Iravan said slowly. “Therewasn’t…But there was something else. Five yearsbefore…”
He turned away from Ahilya and looked out of the window into the dark sky,thinking…
He had considered this the minute Dhruv had spoken about Energy X. Naila had innocently pointed it out, minutes after, but though her words had been thoughtless, her logic had followed Iravan’s own. The last Ecstatic Nakshar had produced before Bharavi had been Manav, five years earlier. But like Bharavi, Manav’s Ecstasy had remained undiscovered for a while. Dhruv must have created the tracker for the elephant-yaksha around then, when Manav was likely experimenting with his new powers. The sungineer hadn’t known his tracker was being charged with Energy X; he had assumed it was running on trajection, like everything else in the ashram.
But Energy X wasEcstatictrajection.
And Ecstatic trajection wasdifferentfrom trajection.
As much as he didn’t want the others to know, as much as he had tried to pivot away from this during the discussion, Iravan knew this to be the truth. He had experienced it, and Bharavi had confirmed it for him. He had been trajecting Ecstatically in the jungle when he’d created magnaroot armors for himself, Ahilya, and Oam. That’s why their citizen rings hadn’t responded;thosedevices only responded to trajection. As for the elephant-yaksha’stracker…There was only one way Ecstatic trajection could charge the tracker in the jungle through all thoseyears…only one reason why the tracker during their escape from the jungle had continued chiming even though their citizen ringshadn’t…
Iravan’s hand trembled as he withdrew the device Dhruv had given him from his pocket.
Then he turned around to fill his gaze with Ahilya.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered.
Ahilya took a step toward him.“Iravan—”
He dove into the silvery Resonance.
He tumbled into the Deepness, spinning through the blackness, his stomach dropping. His skin lit up blue-green. His legs buckled, but Ahilya was there, holding him up, looking into his eyes, saying, “Are you—”; yet he saw her only as a dim memory of what had been, of all the many Ahilyas she could have been and the many Iravans he was.
The energy of Ecstasy flowed through his veins like a river current. Iravan gathered it to him in the manner of a deep inhalation. He spun in the Deepness until he saw the globule of the Moment suspended like a water droplet in the darkness, stars glimmering inside it. A light emerged from him in the Deepness, bright golden, and Iravan focused it, a thin,thinray, shooting it into the globule of the Moment, aimed at the jungle down in the earthrage.
And the locket in his hand began chiming, charging.
His Ecstatic trajection was charging the tracker.
The elephant-yaksha had done the same thing.
Those creatures could traject Ecstatically; not trajection butsupertrajection.
“Ahilya,” Iravan whispered, and all the infinite Ahilyas in his mind leaned toward him in concern, their faces shining with love.
Have you found control, then?he asked Bharavi, and she laughed at him.I’ve found acceptance. I’ve found acceptance. I’ve found—
The Resonance wrenched from him, appearing in his second vision, its silvery wings mirroring his golden light in the Deepness.
And for the first time, Iravan accepted it for what it was: a siren that had been calling out to him for years, for lifetimes, echoing through time, waiting for him to acknowledge it.
The Resonance reacted to his acknowledgement. Its silvery molten flaps whooshed out of the Deepness, and he saw instead the architect behind thatcall—
A gigantic falcon-yaksha flying toward him, its wings spanning nearly a hundred feet, its black eyes glinting in uncontrollable fury at how long Iravan had made it wait, how many eons, how manybirths—
