Page 149 of The Surviving Sky
Iravan pressed her hand. “I suspect theyakshas—allthe ones you’ve studied, and all the ones we saw before thevortex—thosemust be the counterpart creatures of the original architects. Thefirstarchitects. Yet more and more of those cosmic beings have been splitting, into architects and some unknown form. A new earthrage begins on the heels of the last, without a break. Perhaps multiple beings split at the same time. It might be why the rages have been getting longer and the lulls shorter. We were lucky that we had to stop only one of thecreatures—althoughit is only a matter of time before the being we trapped breaks through our barrier or another one attempts the split.”
Ahilya nodded. She had already worked it out. It corroborated the census data she had once studied. More and more people had been born with the ability to traject. If earthrages created architects, it only made sense. And if multiple beings split at the sametime…Could that explain the many epicenters of a single storm?
“That being I saw,” she said, confirming, “that wasn’t you.”
“No. But it was of the same species like me. Likeus.” He nodded back toward the falcon. “A yaksha and an architect are fragments of the cosmic being, but a being is greater than its parts. We lost something in the process of splitting that no amount of union can repair. Despite our union, we are incomplete.”
Ahilya stared at him. The cosmic creature had appeared nothing more than a wisp of air to her, but its split had seemed like the world breaking. Rocks had shattered in her mind, and a chilling scream had echoed over the planet. It was what had happened to Iravan, to what he and his yaksha had once been. How had they survived the pain of that for so many lifetimes? The guilt?
“You are still you,” she whispered, almost afraid of what he’d say. “Aren’t you?”
Iravan smiled. “Yes. I am still me. More so than I’ve ever been.”
“And the union?” Ahilya asked, studying his face, those unearthly eyes. “How do you feel?”
Iravan’s shoulders moved uncomfortably. “It feels likeI’ve…grown…a limb where once there had only been a phantom. I can see the Resonance in the Deepness. And I feel a silence in the back of my mind. I know both of those are the falcon, but we’ll have to learn to communicate with each other. Fragments as we both are, the bird has as much its own consciousness as I have mine.”
They sat silently, their fingers weaving in and out of each other’s. Around them, the garden grew in rasps and creaks.There could be life here, Ahilya thought. Birds and animals and people, just like there were in the ashrams above. This could be the haven that she’d always sought in her research, a place for humankind to live again. A weight of sadness filled her chest. She swallowed, trying to loosen it.
“When we were in the caves,” she said after some time, “you said Ecstasy brought clarity. Is this what you meant, about the yakshas and these cosmic beings?”
“More than that,” Iravan said. “I meant clarity about my history. Ahilya, the ancient architects always knew yakshas were their ownselves—theirotherhalves—theyknew this from the very beginning. There was a time when the yakshas were revered, when architects released the cosmic beings into birth deliberately to sustain trajection, and sought the yakshas after, perhaps to unite with them. That was a time when Ecstasy was desirable. Yet Ecstasy was a reminder that we split, thatwecreated the earthrages. If a society of architects chose Ecstasy, there’d be no goingback—andso, eventually, architects began to fear the jungle. They erased the yakshas and buried this knowledge, perhaps in a part of the histories that they kept secret even from their own kind. I don’t know what brought the change about, but I can understand it. Architects would have had to live with the knowledge of their guilt andshame—andmore, they would have to recompense for what they had done after they became Ecstatics.”
Ahilya glanced at him. “What do you mean? Recompense how? Why?”
Iravan took a deep breath.“Ecstasy—itchanges you. Bharavi tried to tell me, but it is only now that Iunderstand—nowthat I feel this burning desire in me so clearly. Inherent to Ecstasy is the union with the yaksha, and inherent to the union is the desire to make up for lifetimes of mistakes.”
Iravan raised a slow hand to his chest.
“I can feel it,” he whispered, staring. “The desire to make amends weighs on me, heavy on my heart. If architects throughout had allowed Ecstasy, they would have had to make up for everything they had once done; they would almost have had no choice. It was better to outlaw Ecstasyaltogether—tobuild material bonds and limits and arbitrary rules, and forbid the jungle and forget the yakshas. It was better to be worshipped by those who couldn’t traject instead of admitting to them how we had destroyed their world. Thatsecret—thatis my shameful history.”
“But you built the labyrinth. You stopped the earthrage.”
Iravan shook his head, dropping his hand. “No, Ahilya.Youstopped the earthrage.Youwere the template to fix me. You were the shield that could touch the creature. You brought the will and the desire and the form. I merely had the means, butyou—andthose like you without the ability totraject—youhold the power to stop earthrages and take away trajection altogether, for all future to come. It’s why the architects feared your kind. It’s why they erased you. What we didtoday—somewhereout there is a fetus that will gain consciousness, but it won’t have the ability to traject. It willbe…whole unto itself. Like you. That is not the kind of thing the architects would have liked. Only a very small section of architects sought to find the truth.”
“Those rebel groups we saw in the caves,” Ahilya whispered, understanding.
“Yes. A group of architects and citizens. I think they chose to build the habitat and tried to stop the earthrages. They knew that the rages couldn’t be stopped by architectsalone—orby complete beings who cannot traject. They needed to work together, one to build, the other to push the labyrinth into reality. But they were a splinter group. Most architects chose to fly. Rather than face their truths, they escaped into the skies. In the end, the increasing earthrages killed the rebels, too.” Iravan’s hands trembled once, then stilled. “I was one of them. One of those who chose power and flight instead of truth and completion. Again and again and again.”
Tears thickened her throat. Ahilya couldn’t think of a single appropriate thing to say. If Iravan was right, then everything their civilization had built itself on, all the decisions the ashramstook—theywere all based on a lie. She had been right, but she couldn’t feel vindication. A heavy sadness grew in the place where anger had once lived. Her lingering resentments against the architects faded like fog in sunlight.
She broke the gaze and looked back at the garden Iravan had built. It had bloomed in the last few minutes. More streams of water had appeared, and Iravan had constructed several waterfalls gently trickling down the rocks. Ahilya smelt the moisture and life in the air.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. She could feel him smile though she couldn’t bear to look at him, not with the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. “You’ve built this place for others, too.”
“Yes.I…”Iravan choked on his own repressed tears. “I don’t belong to an ashram anymore. Not like this. Not with who I’ve finally become. But my purpose has never been clearer. To find a way to tell the other ashrams about the truth I’ve learned, to release the architects from the fear of Ecstasy, andto—”
“End every earthrage,” Ahilya whispered.
“Yes. With your help.”
Ahilya shook her head. “Those beings were trying to escape erasure. You would stop them from doing so? Is that right, Iravan? When once you funneled them into birth yourself?”
“What else is our choice? To let them split? To let them break our planet?”
“So, it is us against them?”
“I’ve been so lost, Ahilya. I would not wish it upon those beings. Itis…harrowing.”
