Page 6 of The Enduring Universe
The structure in front of him continued to form. Wood chips stacked atop each other, the walls deckled. Water turned into glinting icicles to hang like crystalline lamps along the door. Phosphorescence shone everywhere, and furniture formed within the home, a desk, a closet, a bed, visible through the shimmering ice-windows. Chairs grew out of the soil, not high-backed and carved like his seat in the Garden, but comfortable, low, meant for household tasks and ease.
A bitter smile formed on Iravan’s face at the suggestion of this domesticity. If survival had not been the cost, Iravan would have found his battle of wills with Ahilya a diverting challenge. Instead, fury rose in him. They had come so close to reconciliation and understanding. They had come so close to finally ending the Virohi together.
And she had chosen them.
She alone knew the pain of separation. She had seen his fight with the falcon-yaksha, and experienced the way complete beings had been treated. She had campaigned for change once. If she wanted to, she could simply will the Virohi out of the architecture—give them to him so he could destroy them once and for all. How could she put him in a position where he had no choice but to alienate Irshar, despite his desire to make amends? They could have given the survivors new life if not for her stubbornness. But she had left him alone… with himself.
His resentment found expression in the construction. The chairs began to decay. The carved wooden door began to warp, and the jasmines on it grew dark, withered, fell away. The tiny icicle lamps and delicate ice windows burst into silent shards, whipping toward Iravan’s cheeks like sharp tears. The home he was building shookas though an earthrage was imminent. Iravan took a deep breath, and mastered himself with an effort. The decay paused, then shook once, before the construction bloomed anew.
He could not afford to rage, not with the everpower.
This ability, that was neither Ecstasy nor trajection but superior to both, was connected deeply to his emotion and his capital desire. The Moment, the Deepness, the Etherium, even the silence where the falcon-yaksha once lived, had all combined into a singular evervision. It had been this way ever since he fully embraced his Ecstasy to build the original Irshar in the skies. Then, he did not understand it. He stumbled through it blindly, merging all the ashrams together.
Since he subsumed the falcon though, he’d realized that in reality there were never three separate visions. He could manipulate them all at once, like he could move his hands and feet though they were separate parts of his body. Now he understood: there was very little that lay between himself and sheer possibility.
The only mystery that remained was his lack of control in the Etherium he shared with Ahilya.
In a futile test Iravan called for the connection to her, but nothing happened.
It irked him to distraction that she alone had that control. Was this some sort of balance? Everpower for him and the Etherium for her? He thought the Etherium a place of guidance, a place that could not be controlled, and there had been a deep relief in that, even joy. But if she could do it, could he? Was this only available to complete beings like her, or perhaps only to her?
She was so much more than just a complete being. She was… she wasAhilya. She had let him into her mind many times during the last three months, sometimes when surrounded by others in Irshar, other times to see what he was doing, at all times aloof and cool.
Her aloofness terrified him. He was so scared that the cosmic creatures were corrupting her beyond hope that the glint of her rage today was a relief, a gift.Oh my love, he thought in sudden despair.We have come to an ending we were headed for all along.
The house had become a multi-storied thing of beauty, its roof slated to allow rainwater to slough off, its ice windows glazed and glittering. Jasmine bloomed on all the walls, a rich tapestry of tiny white flowers. Stone statues of falcons in mid-flight ornamented the front door. Iravan hadn’t consciously built any of this, yet the house formed due to a buried intention, a stream trickling in the front, a verandah, trees that grew in the shape of a playhouse, a yard and swings and a slide. His hand drifted to the blade of pure possibility he wore, and just for an instant he thought of whether he could do with it what he intended. Whether he could…return.
“Iravan-ve,” a voice said.
He turned to see a young boy stand by the trees, staring in wonder at the construction.
With his tousled hair and wide eyes, Darsh looked younger than fifteen, but that impression swiftly left Iravan as the boy neared him. An air of seriousness hung around the child, one Iravan had noticed that first time he had met him back in Nakshar’s deathcage. In the past few months, Darsh had grown taller by several inches and now reached nearly to Iravan’s shoulder. A rush of pride and affection filled Iravan on seeing him. This young man was one of the best, most skilled Ecstatics of the Garden. Iravan’s lieutenant.
“What are you building?” Darsh asked, coming to join Iravan on the rock. “Is this for the Ecstatics? For after we’ve united with our yakshas?”
Whatwashe doing? Building a home for Ahilya—for his children—despite knowing everything he did? It was pathetic. He had returned to this project often, no matter where he and Darshstopped in the jungle, building and rebuilding idly, almost as a form of meditation. But for the first time, the pointlessness of it hit him. He had seen Ahilya’s anger. In destroying the Virohi, he would destroy any future with her.
His hand dropped from the blade around his neck.
Enough, he thought.
The house exploded into tiny shards.
Mulch, wood, bark and leaves spun silently around them in a gust of wind. The falcon statues splintered then dissolved into gray dust. Jasmine putrefied, its rotting stench smothering the air as the flowers disappeared.
The clearing lay bare as though there was never a home, never this indulgence, and Iravan thought in grim acceptance,What purpose this building? What need for such a construction?His marriage to Ahilya was meaningless now. This house was a dream, a foolishness. It was truly over between them.
He answered Darsh’s question with his own. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” the boy said, a sullen twist to his mouth. “The presence in the Deepness has not returned. Maybe I am not releasing Nakshar’s Constant when I traject.”
“That’s not possible. All trajection, Ecstatic or otherwise, releases the raga. Each time you traject you call out to your yaksha.”
It was one of the earliest things he and Ahilya had discovered together, all those months ago in Nakshar, when they could never have contemplated where life would bring them. They’d hypothesized, along with Dhruv and Naila, that within trajection lay the seed of its demise, but none of them could have known how true that statement would be. Ahilya had ended the earthrages and tied all the cosmic creatures to this dimension, effectively ending any split of a Virohi. She had ended the rise of new architects in thefuture, and because of her in time trajection would die—something Iravan ought to thank her for.
But that would only occur if Iravan completed his part of the task.
Unless all architects alive united with their yakshas, they would be reborn with the power to traject, Virohi or no Virohi.
