Page 19 of The Enduring Universe
Ahilya’s will grew in his heart as she attempted to stop him. He felt her alarm and despair, her desperate attempt to bind the creatures back in Irshar. They both knew that he was the stronger of the two. She had only just learned of her power. He had been aware of it—conditioned within it—since birth.
Iravan thought,Is it really just this easy?
Relief made his muscles weak. A few more minutes until the bomb reached its full potential and then it would be finished.
He pulled the Virohi, one final tug as smoky forms filled the sky, pouring toward him. Irshar wobbled, debris falling as he sucked the cosmic creatures away.
And in that instant when he felt Ahilya’s hold slip, the preciseinstant when the last of the Virohi were pulled in the Deepness, Iravan reared his wings. “Now!” he screamed.
Dhruv pulled the switch on the bomb, blasting all the remaining sungineering power of the device into the Deepness with maximum prejudice. The explosion blinded Iravan momentarily. All three realms shuddered, slamming into each other. The connection with the Ecstatics broke.
Architects fell out of the Deepness, their lights winking away. Their power severed from Iravan, and he spun in the darkness all alone, tumbling head over heels. He floated in his first vision, and saw through the bead on his hand the battery sizzling, sparks flying, Dhruv’s frantic gestures as he attempted to contain the device.
The Virohi had been exploding only a second ago, but with Iravan’s power severed, they slammed into his mind, escaping the Deepness to return through the Conduit, weeping.
The battery detonated into sudden fire.
The universe shook, stars and possibilities turning to powder.
The Moment shattered.
10
TOGETHER
The Moment shattered.
***
They watched it happen in every realm.
11
IRAVAN
The Moment shattered.
A thrumming overtook the Deepness, reverberating from the fracturing Moment. Iravan felt a horror unlike any other.
For a long, interminable instant, the Deepness stilled, waves of a silent supernova pouring through it. Iravan watched, spinning.
In the Etherium, all of his past selves recoiled. Nidhirv began to scream in the forest, holding his head, the tattoos on his skin turning black, turning crimson, like blood pouring out of his body. Askavetra flinched as a tiger-yaksha attacked her; she was an intruder, she had always been the intruder. Iravan stood within Nakshar’s temple, staring after Ahilya, but before she could leave he reached her, he apologized, he never found Ecstasy. Bharavi patted his cheek and smiled, except her teeth cracked and her skin bled, and the Moment shattered again.
What had he done? Tears of fright streamed down Iravan’s face. He had lost. Humanity was obliterated. He had thought his plan was foolproof, a bomb that the Virohi could not escape, but it was over for all of them. The ricochet of the Virohi’s returninto the Moment, the use of the bomb, the terrible explosions had all broken the universe. He drifted in the shattering Moment as stars crumbled one after another, limestone powdery, constellation lines collapsing and disappearing, the entire maze of traps he had constructed falling apart. The stars of the Virohi that Iravan had been squeezing through the Conduit shimmered in the broken Moment, one second there, the next gone, on and on again as if the creatures were attempting to return to the universe fully but were unable to do so. The cloud of Virohi that had been hovering above Irshar grew larger, stronger in Iravan’s first vision. The cosmic creatures sobbed, and it sounded like confusion.
Outside Irshar, the jungle finally began to shake.
The skies thundered as all over the planet, mountains burst into being, trees turned into humanoid shapes, mud turned to quicksand and quaked. Irshar wavered, and massive jagged mountains erupted all around it. The ashram shrunk, hills displacing, people dying. In a corner of his mind, Iravan knew that his perception was failing; that while reality was unravelling, he was too.
Particles flaked from his skin. Bhaskar became him became a corpse became a child. He was Nidhirv and he never met Vishwam, never became an architect. He was Iravan and he lived with Ahilya, their children living in a desolate world as around them earthrages came and went.
Desperately, attempting to hold onto his mind, Iravan tried trajecting with the everpower to stabilize himself and the environment, but the cosmic creatures surrounded him from all directions like a flock of birds. He felt their manic terror and rage, their utter insane derangement. Like injured animals, they were more dangerous than they’d ever been, and he spun, recklessly, his feather cloak whirling, trying to use the everpower to change the air currents, warp them away from him, make sure they didn’t touchhim. An air shield built of shards of dust. The cosmic creatures attempted to pierce it; it cracked, and Iravan twisted, fought off the swarm of shadows, diving and dodging, horrified. Within the Moment, he saw their possibilities flicker, attempting to find anchoring, failing to do so.
In a slow, rational part of his mind, Iravan understood several things. The Moment was destroyed, and the Virohi’s consciousness would not find purchase there. The cosmic creatures would attempt to embed themselves back into the realm, but it would only result in the destruction of the planet. It should have surprised him how the Virohi could affect him so materially now, flocking toward him, trying to break him, but he knew that by containing them in Irshar, Ahilya had allowed them to affect reality directly. They were tied to the planet now in profound ways, and their destruction of everything would come from many avenues.
There was no more hope. Nothing to stop this.
Iravan saw only shadows in front of him, vestiges of smoke that became Ahilya, Bharavi, Arth, and Kush. He knew those were tricks of the Virohi. Each time he moved to dissipate them, they reformed. If his air shield broke they would destroy him from within, burst his body, choke him. They knew he was their enemy. Their destruction of him would not be personal, it would simply be logical—before they destroyed themselves and everything else in their rage and confusion. He almost welcomed his end, but instinct made him fight harder, the falcon within him shrieking in madness.
