Page 15 of The Enduring Universe
The Ecstatics couldn’t see those worlds, but they didn’t need to. They continued to bind themselves to each other in the manner he had trained them. Brilliant lights of a hundred different hues zoomed past each other, their rays crisscrossing in complex patterns around Iravan’s falcon. Some of the shapes in the Deepness reverberated as they lent each other their power, fastening to each other with tight, unbreakable knots. Somewhere in the Garden, the Ecstatics were waiting, their skins glowing blue-green. Iravan’s skin shone with silver tattoos. No matter which realm he used the everpower in, such was the effect of the evervision.
“The sungineers are ready as well,” Dhruv reported.
Briefly, Iravan’s bead flickered. Arrayed around the bone-white battery that had once brought Ahilya to him in the habitat stood a dozen sungineers. Massive golden holograms enveloped them from all sides. Iravan had found the battery months before and kept it with him as a memento of both Ahilya and Nakshar. Darsh’s face darkened when he saw it; he had once been tortured by a similar one. The Garden had never used it for that purpose, but this evolved version would help Iravan destroy the beings that had trapped him in this existence.
As though reading his mind, Dhruv spoke over the bead. “I know you are committed to this, Iravan. But I want to reiterate that I still haven’t built safeguards around the device.”
“We must act,” Iravan replied. “Ahilya might be trying to coax the Virohi back into the architecture even now.”
“I disagree with her on many things, and for better or for worse you have my allegiance. But think of what happened the last time we used the battery.”
Memory flashed. Ashrams wobbling. Lightning storms. A face with jagged teeth and fiery eyes. Skyrage. The battery had weakened the Moment before, allowing the cosmic creatures to break through into the world.
“This time it could be worse,” Dhruv warned. “You could damage the Moment irreparably.”
Did it matter if the Momentwasdamaged? The Moment was useful only to a rare few, and trajection was nearly dead. The architects of the Garden used Ecstasy to trajectintothe Moment; very rarely did they use constellation lines to build anymore. Even the architects left in Irshar who could use the realm couldn’t truly traject their precious ashram to manipulate its architecture. They could only use it on seeds left over from the crash.
Iravan did not voice this. It was callous, even for him. “We will not be in the Moment this time,” he said instead. “We will be in the Deepness, and the Deepness is immune to damage.”
The original battery had broken Airav’s mind, and the Ecstatic battery had tortured Ecstatics. All batteries were dangerous to consciousness, which was why a battery was the only way to ensure the true death of a vast consciousness such as the cosmic creatures. Dhruv had taken the technology from those early prototypes and created a bomb, a remarkably ingenious invention that would suck the consciousness of the Virohi into itself in the same way that a battery had once sucked Airav’s. Then instead of using such an energy, the bomb would explode the Virohi out into the Deepness in a species-destroying cataclysm.
Iravan had no doubt that it would work exactly as intended. He and Dhruv had tested it already on the Virohi Iravan and Ahilya had trapped in the Moment when they’d stopped that first earthrage in the habitat. Iravan had gone hunting for the creature, and seen the effects of the bomb. This time, the bomb was more powerful, aimed to obliterate not just one cosmic creature but all of them.
Darsh’s face was thoughtful and full of questions, but he didn’t speak. Iravan was hardly modelling the restraint he’d advised, but he did not anticipate anything occurring to the Moment or the Deepness. The entire point of removing the Virohi into the Deepness was to ensure no damage could occur to the Moment.
He’d tested the bomb in the Moment, but had known it would not be a viable option to destroy the species. The cosmic creature he had tested the bomb on was weak, imprisoned as it had been by the maze Ahilya and Iravan had constructed. But the others who were embedded in Irshar would be able to affect the Moment; they would try to infiltrate the architects again, making them burncrimson like they had during the skyrages. Iravan could not afford to leave his Ecstatics vulnerable. He had to take the cosmic creatures to a realm they had no power in, and that realm was the Deepness. Besides, the Deepness was a realm which superseded architect-control. A realm where other planets existed, where Iravan could see those planets, this was a place of a thousand worlds, far vaster than a single universe, too immense for a minor explosion to have an effect. Iravan had calculated the risks carefully.
“You’re certain you want to do this?” Dhruv said quietly.
“It’s either them or humanity,” Iravan said grimly. “What choice would you have me make?”
Dhruv did not reply, but the answer was likely clear to the sungineer, in the furious cascades of dust rippling over the ashram, the terrifying gusts of wind howling like enraged beasts. The sounds were miniscule, coming from Iravan’s beads, but in the Garden Dhruv would be able to feel the rumbles of an impending storm, the very same one Ahilya had delayed by interring the Virohi into Irshar. This time Iravan was prepared.
He was going to commit genocide, but what else could one do when faced with such parasites, such a plague? The Garden had superseded the need for ethics. This was about survival.
An image hovered over Iravan’s bead from the drones Dhruv kept positioned over Irshar. Molten stone-like entities dragged themselves out of the architecture. Chunks of green rock lifted into the air and crashed, smoke and fog overtaking the city in thick tentacles. Screams echoed through the device, breaking into static. Nausea built in Iravan, merging with the falcon-yaksha’s vengeance. He willed his body to fly faster.
In the Deepness, the Ecstatics stood ready. Ten-year-old Reyla hovered, her binding to a dozen Ecstatics making her light brighter than everyone else’s. Beside her the other Senior Ecstatics, Pranavwho had once belonged to Nakshar, Theria who had sworn allegiance from Kinshar, and Jyaishna who had once been of Reikshar, all waited for Iravan’s signal.
Each of them was an Ecstatic he had trained. Once, there had only been four, but since then nearly three thousand architects had come to his Garden to learn of their destinies. Each of them would undoubtedly have their own capital desires once they reunited with their yakshas, but for now he was conditioning them so deeply with his own that their only purpose would be to make amends.
That reality was minutes away.
Giddy laughter built within Iravan, and he spun mid-air, flying faster. Within the Etherium, Nidhirv, Mohini and Agni stared at him across time and space, their eyes glinting silver. The falcon reared back in the Deepness. The lives inside of him waited, their eagerness and confusion a sharp reminder of how long he had delayed the fulfillment of his capital desire, how this one fateful action was the last thing needed before true freedom was his. Bhaskar shifted his weight. Mohini rang out in desperate laughter. It was dizzying, to hold so many lives. The desire was like the sweetest rasa, forcing him to react. And he yearned—oh, how he yearned.
“Watch closely,” he said to Darsh. “You can’t make a mistake. Everything hinges on today, and all your training has led to this.”
Thin filaments of silvery light shot out of Iravan’s falcon in the Deepness. His skin radiated silver, coiling patterns blinking in an amazing tapestry. In the Deepness he knotted himself to the five Senior Ecstatics, and through them to a hundred other architects.
A surge of power filled Iravan.
A hundred voices burst into his mind. He could sense the architects in the Deepness, their terror, their excitement, their adrenaline. A part of him wondered what they would feel when he unleashed his wrath. He could sense their strain, how they attemptednot to fight his leash, and how they attempted to acquiesce. Their motes flickered and steadied, long lines of power weaving through a complex trajection of knots to feed him their Ecstasy.
“I already know how to do this linking,” Darsh said. “Teach me about the everpower. You’re going to use it now, aren’t you? To destroy the Virohi? Let me help you.”
“No,” Iravan said. “You have your task.”
Darsh made a face, but did not argue. They continued to fly in silence until they could see the Garden in the distance, its cave mouth and open clearing visible through the foliage.
