Page 27 of The Enduring Universe
The bodies were shrouded in black.
The Junior Ecstatic, Shayla, uncovered them one by one, and Iravan gazed upon the faces of the architects who had been in the Deepness with him, his first line of defense, the ones who had needed his protection the most.
Shobha had been from Auresh, with such a quick wit that it had made Iravan chuckle. Aachal had been serious, one of the first to come to Irshar; they had come to Iravan’s aid long ago when he had fought the falcon-yaksha in Nakshar’s sanctum. Uma had been one of the most promising Ecstatics he had ever worked with; she had discovered the method to combine and tighten Ecstatics’ bonds that had been instrumental in the recent battle.
Iravan forced himself to remember the architects for who they had been, not the mere bodies they were now.
“We are still assessing casualties,” Shayla said softly. “There might be more dead.”
Next to Iravan, Dhruv shifted on his feet and adjusted his glasses. His face was grim.
The Senior Ecstatics following Iravan exchanged uncomfortable glances. The original four—Pranav, Trisha, Darsh, and Reyla—said nothing, but Kamal, Nagesh, and Mukthi muttered nonsensical words of sympathy and despair.
They were the most skilled in Ecstasy. Their loyalty was unquestioned; they had come to Iravan first and stayed with him through the last few months of upheaval. They had been his generals, and commanded the power of the other Ecstatics to feed it to him. Other Senior Ecstatics, Jyaishna, Theria, Vineet, had trained with Iravan only after landing, but these ones he had known when Nakshar was in the skies.
He could feel their confusion now. How could this have happened? They had followed his commands. Iravan-ve knew what he was doing. Didn’t he?
These trusted architects of his retinue were little more than children. Darsh and Reylawerechildren at fifteen and ten. The only one who had ever been in a true position of power was Manav, once a Senior Architect of Nakshar. The man stood with them now, his eyes vacant, staring into the distance, his fingers playing with the edges of his kurta.
All of them had accompanied Iravan to the medical ward of the Garden. Iravan’s home had escaped the physical devastation of the battle with the Virohi. Compared to what Iravan had seen of the ashram from the skies, it was almost obscene how untouched the Garden was.
Keeping true to the design of the Garden, the medical ward was built like an enclosed terrace, with several wild copses growing in clusters, benches rising out of fragrant wood, and streams running haphazardly through the growth. Healbranch grew in profusion, along with mediweed and yararoot and amelaus. Individual chambers were partitioned with trellises, but the effect was still of a wild forest made partially tame.
It was nothing like a sanctum, yet it reminded Iravan of an ashram—neither Nakshar nor Yeikshar, the two ashrams he had lived in, but of Uparesh, a skyborne city that had long been subsumed more than a hundred years ago. An image flashed in his head, laughing with his friends as he performed shift-duty in Uparesh’s sanctum, while he tended the plants with his bare hands, a practice long gone out of fashion, but one that had persisted in Bhaskar’s time. The Garden had taken shape out of Iravan’s memory, except it wasn’t truly his memory, but one belonging to his past life. He shook the memory away.
Shobha, Aachal, and Uma had been popular. They had been teaching the others. They had been part of this fledgling community that the Garden was building. Mutters and whispers came to him like a breeze through the leaves. The chamber was full of architects who were in the battle with him, and those who came to pay respect to the dead. All of them sounded disgruntled, and quietly frightened.
Hostility reverberated through the gathering, and Iravan slouched, the way Bhaskar would when trying to hide his overly tall frame; he shifted into Mohini’s frown, his face scrunching. With an effort, he banished his past lives.
“The Ecstatics were arranged to fight in the same chamber,” he said. “What do you mean there might be more? How do you not know who is dead, and who is not?”
Shayla fidgeted nervously. “Aachal succumbed to their injuries only a few minutes ago. They seemed fine, but then death took them. I believe it was delayed shock, Iravan-ve. The shock of whatever happened.”
The shock of the shattering Moment, Iravan thought.
Or perhaps they had finally seen, finally felt, the cosmic creatures.
Had they all seen what they were up against? The battle was confused in his mind. Iravan could not remember if the Ecstaticshad disappeared from the Deepness before or after the Virohi had attacked. The Virohi’s consciousness no longer blinked in the Moment attempting to anchor, as if Ahilya had taken them from the broken realm and restored them fully by wrapping them in Irshar’s core tree. But even if the Ecstatics did not see the Virohi in their second vision, they must have seen the creatures in their first vision. A feeling of wretchedness climbed over him, terror and amazement in equal parts, making his palms sweat.
He could not fully remember what had happened, only that Ahilya had somehow intervened and the cosmic creatures had retreated to where he could not follow. If he could only feel them in the Moment again, perhaps he could find a way to destroy them, but how was he to fulfill his capital desire now? It burned in him. He could almost feel it sloughing off of his flesh, as if by taking stock now he was only delaying acting against the creatures. Had Ahilya made it back to the ashram safely? His feet fidgeted, wanting to go to Irshar, but though he thought it, his body froze, reading his intent.
Ahilya’s survival meant little to his capital desire. To his past lives, she was the clear enemy—not only one who had thwarted his attempt to wreak vengeance on the Virohi at every turn, but one who had taken the Virohi to a refuge he could not follow at all. He tried battling his body, tried to make it swerve toward Irshar to check on his wife, but he knew that unless his actions served the destruction of Virohi, he could not act at all—not without fighting the will of the many inside him. And the flight over the jungle, searching for her, had already shown him how difficult that was. He had not been able to rescue her then. He would not be able to reach for her now.
Iravan stared at the dead laid in front of him. His body was not the only one which was failing to follow a command. Ecstaticshealed, that much was known. How much damage had these three sustained that their bodies had not instantly recovered? These limits he pushed himself and the others beyond… how would he be able to conquer them?We deserve to be punished, Bhaskar whispered.We need to make amends.
“May you be reborn in better times,” he murmured. “May your desire be pure and just, and may you fulfill it to make amends.”
He willed it, and flowers bloomed on the grass. He picked up the three lush wreaths, placing one on each architect’s body. The flowers would remain fresh for days, he had used the everpower. This much at least he could do, before his desire waned.
Iravan looked up to see the mutters had stopped. An uncomfortable silence lingered, a dozen pairs of eyes on him. He met their gazes levelly.
He had added to the traditional epitaph with his wish for amends. Iravan had been blatant with his desire; these were Ecstatics he was dealing with, not mere architects. Once, he had been more discreet with his agenda, but those had been the games of a Senior Architect. Such a thing wasn’t necessary with Ecstatics.
Ecstasy was brute force, not a delicate maneuvering of constellation lines like trajection. The power changed the people using it. The everpower had changed him too: he had become more single-minded. But the falcon screamed in his head, and Mohini laughed, a tinkling sound, and Iravan grimaced, an action made by Nidhirv in the twist of his mouth, and thought,Can I really be single-minded when I have so many minds inside me?
“They have—had—family in Irshar,” Shayla said.
“Inform them of this,” Iravan replied. “These three were Ecstatics of the Garden. They will be returned to the earth here. But their families can say goodbye and find closure for their grief.”
