Page 67 of The Enduring Universe
40
IRAVAN
Iravan battled for his life.
Not even with the falcon-yaksha had he experienced this trajection. He had not known that excision could be done from the Deepness. The falcon had tried to subsume him—but this combined assault of the pocket-Deepness and the ray of severance shook him, making an escape impossible.
He attempted to summon the Conduit, but that would mean leaving Darsh alone here, to wreak his damage. So he darted within its small chamber, trying to escape Darsh’s attack. His intention formed to trap Darsh again, to put a stop to this somehow, but he did not have enough time to understand how to carry it. The falcon of his form crashed into one wall then another, attempting to evade the relentless pursuit of Darsh’s arrow-like rays, intent on immobilizing him. The bird thrashed, still caught in the web of Darsh’s making, leading him on as it tried to escape.
Darsh hunted, unyielding, with his yaksha.
Iravan saw the boy’s form chasing him in the Deepness, light appearing like a drawn bow, sending thousands of excision raystoward him. The falcon spun, wings wrapped around itself, trapped yet fleeing.
A ray grazed his wing. Deep pain lanced through Iravan, and in the first vision he stumbled on shaky ground, a rupture opening in his side where a wing might be, blood gushing down. Furious memory awoke in the falcon’s form—
Without his volition, the falcon screamed, a horrible echoing sound that nearly deafened Iravan.
The bird unwound and faced Darsh in the Deepness, trails of web falling down its wings. Iravan could only watch, horrified, as the falcon inside him took over, sending out a trajection of such fast linking toward the incorporeal yaksha that Iravan almost thought he’d imagined it.
Darsh’s yaksha detached from the boy, flying toward the falcon in the Deepness, flooding Iravan with immense power. The contracted Deepness forgotten, Iravan entered the evervision, and saw it occur in all the three visions—
The same lancing of excision that Darsh had been attempting to perform on him, but done with the entire force of reality behind Iravan this time.
The falcon swung a wing down in a massive obliterating weave.
The Moment, the Deepness, the Etherium, all shivered.
The jet of silvery light from the evervision cleaved Darsh’s form in the Deepness, splitting it into jagged shards.
For an eternity, everything seemed to freeze, reality holding its breath. Sparks lingered, shining.
Then Darsh winked out of the Deepness.
Iravan moved slowly toward the boy who still stood on the platform within the first vision. In a hopeless part of his mind, Iravan thought that he’d been mistaken, that he had won but had not harmed, that it was all going to be fine.
Then light seeped out of Darsh, like water draining.
His body grew dark and pitched forward into Iravan’s arms, cold as ice. There was no heartbeat, no bloodflow, no life.
Across the distance, Ahilya was on her feet while others around her knelt in pain, still recovering from Darsh’s onslaught. Iravan’s horror and pain and shock were etched on the lines of her face, in the way her mouth hung open, in her eyes that were finally seeing him for the monster he was.
Within him, the falcon laughed, sinking its talons into Iravan’s skin.
A cry of despair filled Iravan’s throat.
He howled then, an unearthly sound of madness. The Garden shook, reacting to him, the plates beneath everyone shifting and breaking, mud sinking, roots whipping, thorns and brambles rising from every plant while icicles pierced the earth. Behind Iravan, the rock face split open, a tunnel rapidly forming to lead into utter blackness.
Iravan cradled Darsh’s dead body, and embraced the dark.
41
AHILYA
Ahilya kept her eyes trained on the ceiling of the assembly hall.
Despite the thrashing it had taken from Iravan and Darsh’s combined powers, it was reknitting, though not in any manner she had seen before. This was the same cascading whirlpool of silvery dust that had begun before Iravan and Darsh had started to duel, and it was evolving. It was like neither the weaving of plants or roots, nor the layered construction of stone or rock. It wasn’t the manner in which the Virohi had changed Irshar’s architecture, nor the undulating effect of everdust which made one’s eyes hurt. This resembled the slowest, most hesitant kind of construction. At the edges of it, Ahilya could see simply light, like dancing spots across her irises. The spots flickered and disappeared, coming together only to come apart again.
It reminded her eerily of how the everdust had been so long ago, when she had first entered this habitat in pursuit of Iravan after his abduction by the falcon-yaksha. Back then, the dust had been sentient, waiting for her to think something, responding to her like an affectionate pet. Even now the shimmering was cautious, as if thisdust was weighing the lives it was surrounded with, changing itself and the architecture, yet doing so without startling anyone. Ahilya had been watching it for longer than an hour, ever since Iravan had disappeared. Perhaps she was the only one watching; if so, she could see clearly, the silvery light intersecting and crisscrossing, air made solid, as it rebuilt the roof without ceremony.
