Page 64 of The Enduring Universe
Ahilya did not reply. She touched another fallen Ecstatic, the one nearest to her. Similar images pounded her, vapors of joy, whispers of sadness in her Etherium, each memory ending with the architect clearly in pain though the architect themselves remained unmoving.
What did this mean? What could she do? What was the vriksh showing her? Whatever Iravan was combating with Darsh, she was certain her husband was not aware of this. Shayla and Bipesh followed her as she crouched next to another Ecstatic, images forming within her Etherium. She heard Shayla’s questions, but finally abandoned her examination.
Iravan needed to know this. That the affected architects were inpain, that Darsh was changing them in some way. But could she afford to distract him now? His focus was too intense. What if she disrupted whatever he needed to do? She considered pulling him into the forest of her Etherium like she had done before. There, they could talk.
But it would take too long.
She couldn’t risk such a move, not right now.
Nervously, Ahilya watched Iravan crouch next to Darsh, speaking soft words.
36
IRAVAN
In a corner of his mind, Iravan could sense Ahilya and her attention. His shields formed around his Etherium, not enough to cut her out, but enough to not be distracted, not when he was operating on such a delicate level.
Ignoring the events in the Garden, Iravan kept his focus on the Deepness.
There was a real danger to creating new fully realized Ecstatics. He had seen that first-hand when Rana and the rogue Ecstatics had attacked citizens of Irshar, fighting Iravan’s command. He knew he could not raise an army of Ecstatics, each of them intent on their capital desires, challenging his, but Iravan knew too that unity with a yaksha was inevitable. He had not seen the corporeal yakshas for some time, but incorporeal ones could have been fluttering among them, unseen and invisible since they’d all crash-landed. After all, this had once been the yakshas’ habitat.
He had tried to prepare the Garden, but now a powerful wave of sadness and compassion filled Iravan. He wanted to take Darsh in his arms and comfort him.
He had designed a protocol, one that everyone knew. Any time an Ecstatic was summoned by their yaksha counterpart, he would guide them through the unity. But the events with the rogue Ecstatics had showed him that influencing the Ecstatics through the sheer power of his personality, through custom and law and repetition, was not enough. He had needed to think of a way by which any Ecstatic that united with their yaksha would choosehiscapital desire over their own. There was only one way to guarantee that. Only one way to ensure the Ecstatic merging with their yaksha did not result in death and calamity for the human species. That secret he had shared with no one, not even Dhruv.
I’m so sorry, Iravan thought. Grief gripped him, melded with shame.
Slowly, inch by inch, he tightened the lasso around Darsh in the second vision. He drew Darsh closer in the Deepness until his falcon enveloped the boy’s form. Close as Darsh’s yaksha was to him, it followed too, held within Iravan’s wings—though Iravan did not attempt to touch it with his lasso. Darsh’s Ecstatic ray of light still pierced the lasso, aimed into the Moment, but this close Iravan could discern the jet of light Darsh trajected was an intricate collection of dots, weaving between the strands of Iravan’s lasso without touching them, so Iravan remained unaffected in the Deepness as he’d hoped.
The boy’s form struggled, a dust mote that vibrated enough to make a keening sound in the silence of the Deepness. In the first vision, Darsh remained immobile, but the light in his eyes grew bluer.
Iravan imposed his will, and the lasso he had trajected began to leach hair-thin fibers. The fibers converted into a dome, closing Darsh and the yaksha within the Deepness. He flicked his wings, and a slim filament of light extended from the dome, capturingthe supertrajection of both Darsh and his incorporeal yaksha in a sheath.
Awareness flooded Iravan. A sense of the yaksha’s emotion, confused, patient, watchful. Darsh’s emotions too, grief and fear and clarity. By sheathing Darsh’s trajection in his own light, Iravan could see the trajection the boy and his yaksha were doing in the Moment through Darsh’s eyes. He could see the manner in which the yaksha had found Darsh’s brittle stars in the shattering universe, how Darsh’s light ricocheted from star to broken star, attempting to reach the yaksha in a pattern of unity but instead finding those of the Ecstatics and trajecting them.
It really does come to this, Iravan thought. Darsh was already harming the Ecstatics, trajecting them without their consent. What Iravan was going to do to him now was a flagrant violation of consent too, abominable and similar in every way. What other choice was there?
Iravan superimposed his will on Darsh and the yaksha. An intricate web of light emerged from his dome to intersect with the trajection they did into the Moment. Iravan navigated, and slowly, stealthily, he curved the boy’s intention, seeping it with his. He changed Darsh’s capital desire, reaching far back into Darsh’s consciousness, so that the boy’s capital desire transformed into one of making amends. He bled his intention into the boy in a careful manipulation of Darsh’s past lives. This was not just a trajection. This was Darsh’s ruin. Iravan could only hope that after all this, the boy still remained himself in some capacity. He could only hope that he was not changing Darsh beyond his capital desire, that he was not making the boy his servant, his pawn.
In the Garden, Darsh’s head snapped back, staring at the ceiling.
His body began to shake.
Iravan saw the cord around the Ecstatics drop as Darsh’s trajection in the broken Moment wavered.
But that lasted just for an instant.
Darsh’s memory spiked, and all of Iravan’s visions filled with the boy. He blinked—but he was Iravan no longer, he was the boy, and images flooded the both of them. Of being younger, being held by his architect parents proudly when he was discovered as being capable of trajection in Nakshar. Begging them to help him, when Maze Architects dragged him away to be trapped in a deathcage. His mother in Irshar after the Conclave’s crash, and the way she had walked away from him when he’d asked her to join the Garden.
Tears trickled down Darsh’s eyes, blue-green, shimmering blood-like. Iravan heard his thoughts in his own mind. This was the ashram he was to make amends to? His scream built in Iravan’s throat.
“NO!” the both of them cried out, and Iravan realized with horror that Darsh had leached his emotion back into him while he’d attempted his maneuvering.
The dome and the sheath shattered in the Deepness.
Darsh’s form exploded in a blaze of light.
Darsh and his yaksha zipped away from Iravan, turning to face him as though only just seeing him. In the Garden, the boy spun, his hands balled into fists. Light leached from him, thrusting into the Moment, and the dark cord that had only just fallen away from the Ecstatics thickened, a hundred times more powerful, whipping around each and every Ecstatic this time, spearing them, sparing no one. Cries echoed everywhere, followed by an ominous gurgling silence.
