Page 66 of The Enduring Universe
As if he were using the everpower, Iravan realized, his heart hammering in terror.
Screams rent the air, and Iravan panicked. The ground he and Darsh were standing on was rising. More bodies were spasming, other Ecstatics somehow being blocked from entering the Deepness. How was Darsh doing this? What would it achieve? Iravan stared, not understanding, as Galan, Divena, and Vivek shot up in the air, their bodies impaled by thick curling smoke-like vines, before crashing back into the earth. Were they alive?
A soft breathy voice spoke behind him. Reyla stood there, trembling, her hand touching Iravan’s kurta lightly. She had left the protective circle of the other Ecstatics. For some reason, the cords had not affected her, and now the both of them rose on the platform along with Darsh. Iravan reached out a steadying hand to the girl as the ground shook again and she stumbled.
“Iravan-ve,” she breathed. “I tried to tell you. He did this before. I don’t know how, but we were both trying to attempt our evervision, and then he warped the Deepness. Let me show you how.”
Her skin lit up with the light of trajection, and suddenly she was there in the Deepness right next to Iravan’s falcon, her tiny burst of lights glimmering.
Reyla trajected before he could speak, a pattern of astonishing complexity, half-network half-vine, and in the evervision Iravan noticed it was not just the shattered Moment she was trajecting, but she was twisting the velvety Deepness itself, folding the space around Darsh. How was this possible? The realms were separate, and though he asked for his architects to view them the same way, what Reyla was doing was removing the barrier of separationaltogether. Iravan had asked for a shift ofperspective. This was rendering that shift in reality.
Reyla’s trajection took form. Some of the cords connecting to Darsh stripped away from him in both the visions, reacting to Reyla’s folding of space.
Darsh turned his blue-green gaze toward her. He raised his arm, and brought it down in a slashing motion. Iravan had no time to react.
Reyla’s soft sigh turned into a cry. The little girl fell, her light winking out.
Iravan roared then in grief, and inside him the falcon responded. His ray of light in the Deepness grew sharp like a blade, and he swung toward Darsh’s dust mote without thinking, like he once had in a fight with the falcon-yaksha.
Darsh parried just as easily as the falcon. He trajected his own beam, and split Iravan’s light into two. Iravan hammered with another ray, then another, a barrage of them shooting from him like missiles, but Darsh dodged them easily, him and his yaksha dancing between Iravan’s beam, returning a volley with their own shards of light.
The Deepness transformed, contracting around Iravan like he was in a deathmaze. Wonder and awe bloomed in Iravan as he realized that whatever was happening was mimicking that sungineering technology. Reyla had said that Darsh was doing this, but how? Iravan had no time to dwell on it.
The boy and the incorporeal yaksha spun next to each other, dizzyingly, their shapes becoming impossible to distinguish. A powerful ray of light emerged from them, its edges sharp and thorny, resembling a serrated brittlevine.
The vine enveloped Iravan, crushing him.
In the Deepness, the falcon’s wings grew trapped as Darshunleashed a massive web of power, each thread sharpened like a blade.
He was attempting to cut Iravan off from the Deepness, but in Iravan’s heightened sense of the evervision, it would not only cut him off from the one realm, it would do so in all the realms. This was not mere trajection. This was a kind of excision.
The boy’s ray of light hurtled toward Iravan, too fast to stop.
39
AHILYA
Perhaps it was because she had already given so much of herself to the Virohi. Perhaps it was simply a natural function of overwriting.
In the end, it was not so hard.
Ahilya stood in a vast grassland and imagined a shield. The grass of memories—the lives of the Ecstatics—rose in a wall.Build, she thought, and an ethereal barrier grew around her, grass hardening into bark, keeping the force of what Darsh was doing back.
The Ecstatics’ memories solidified into recollections of strength. Images came to Ahilya of different people. Of a time when they had been Maze Architects and Junior Architects, keeping their ashrams afloat. Of a time when they had believed in themselves, and the sanctity of their purpose. Ahilya held onto this strength, building the barrier, keeping Darsh out. She pulled open the doors to her house, one after another, and allowed the consciousness of all these people to filter through to her like air, pulling them the same way she would pull Iravan into her forest.
Shadows flickered in the Etherium, then came rushing to standnext to her. Their silhouettes were recognizable, though they were wisps of smoke. Bipesh, Shayla, Ravi, Jyaishna, and all the others who lay fallen in the Garden—their minds opened to her in the Etherium, and they waited for her command.
Like an architect, Ahilya trajected, turning will and desire into actuality.
Resist, she thought.Wake.
Around her, black-clad Ecstatics started to stir. She gripped Naila’s hand, nudging her to open her eyes. The two of them stared as the Ecstatics blinked in the Garden, their eyes widening. An awe grew inside Ahilya, the recognition of the Ecstatics’ emotion. Black leached out of the Ecstatic’s eyes, and their skins returned to normal. Their bones healed, and one by one the dark cords connecting them to Darsh faded, glimmering away, so that soon Ahilya could see nothing but the broken assembly hall, and the staggering Ecstatics around her reviving themselves. The construction of the Garden continued to change, but instead of the destruction wrought by the duel, the same soft flow of dust churned in whirlpools.
Whatever Darsh had done, she was reversing it. TheEcstaticswere reversing it, pulling themselves back together, even unto repairing their own bodies in an awe-inspiring, grotesque remaking.
Ahilya turned away from them. She silenced the sounds of bones clicking together, or cries and screams, as the Ecstatics reformed themselves. She could just glimpse Iravan, the terrified look in his eyes. She had done all she could to help him—taken the Ecstatics out of the equation. She would deal with the horrible implications of her power later.
For now, she willed Iravan to survive his fight.
