In this dazzling sequel to the The Surviving Sky, Ahilya and Iravan risk everything—their lives, their culture, and their fragile marriage—in pursuit of the earth-shattering truth about their existence.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kritika H. Rao’s The Unrelenting Earth, which is out June 18th 2024.
Two months have passed since Ahilya and Iravan learned the devastating truths behind the earthrages. As the cosmic creatures struggle to break into the world, and Nakshar’s architecture disintegrates, the desperate council summons their sister ashrams to a Conclave, to discuss the future of life in the skies.
Ahilya, now a councillor, is determined to share the truth about the cosmic beings and the nature of Ecstatic trajection so she can liberate ordinary citizens and save the condemned architects. Her conviction has alienated her allies and created dangerous enemies. Only Iravan has a chance of persuading the Conclave that Ecstatics are not unstable, but he returns from the jungle struggling with his own Ecstasy. He has little control over his second-self, the primal falcon yaksha, and finds the Conclave hostile to his cause.
As strange, deadly storms break out, threatening refuge even in the skies, Iravan and the other Ecstatic architects face brutal reprisals. And with the barrier restraining the cosmic beings thinning, Ahilya and Iravan know they are running out of time to save everyone. Thrust into the center of the storm, both will have to confront what matters most to them, who they really are, and what it means for the future of humanity.
IRAVAN
The silence of unity rippled through Iravan.
It threaded through him demanding attention even as the world prepared for another death, another annihilation.
He sat upon the falcon-yaksha, his shoulders tense. Under him, the falcon was rock still, a gigantic bird perched on an earthy outcrop. An expanse of jungle spread out in front of him, a construct of soil illuminated by afternoon sunlight, green clutched in a birthing storm.
Leaves curled and withered. Bark groaned and crackled, crumpling from the inside. Wind rustled, fierce and gusting, lifting seeds that poured out of trees, carrying them away in a promise of new growth. The sounds of destruction filled his ears, but Iravan sat motionless, aware only of the silence that occupied his heart.
The silence was not his, not truly; it belonged to the falcon—
But then he grinned, a tight twisted smile—for weren’t he and the yaksha part of the same being? There was no other sign of life in the immediate jungle, no birds, no squirrels, neither animals nor humans. For two months, he hadn’t even seen any other yakshas except for his own falcon. Those had disappeared far from the habitat, and he had spent his time with only himself for company. He was still unaccustomed to the deathly quiet of loneliness. It was more marked now than ever before, with the full fury of the earthrage imminent.
He sank his fingers into the falcon’s silvery feathers that, after all this time, still smelled like smoke. He and the falcon had burned together when they had separated into an earthrage. Iravan had forgotten it once. He would never forget again.
That was the silence—a memory he had repressed far too long, angry and vast and relentless. There was no forgiveness in what they’d done. No absolution. Shame formed a tight ball in his throat. It embossed a lasting image on his heart.
The earthrage built like a long drawn out scream.
The yaksha’s silence remained.
Iravan took a deep, shaky breath.
All his instincts told him to nudge the yaksha, to leap into the air where it was safe, but he had not landed here of his own accord. They had been gliding in the open skies, and the falcon had brought him to this outcrop. He knew it would not leave, not until it had shown him what it wanted.
Iravan waited, embedded in the Two Visions of Ecstasy. He and the falcon watched the storm come in their first vision. The ground trembled. Tree trunks burst like overripe melons. Massive balloons of dust rose, racing toward them from all directions.
In their second vision, within the infinite velvety darkness of the Deepness, Iravan and the Resonance fluttered around each other. The Resonance was the falcon’s form in the Deepness; he would forever think of the silvery molten particle in those terms. The thing had haunted him for so long, but it was still familiar, more familiar than the creature whose feathers he clutched. What was it doing? Why was it waiting? In his first vision, Iravan gripped the falcon tighter and licked his lips.
Under them, the jungle roiled, a deep tremor.
A trembling dewdrop reflected a ring forming around the falcon’s eye.
Powered by the yaksha, the tracker locket around Iravan’s neck began to chime. A thrill rose inside him.
Silvery light emanated from the Resonance in the Deepness. The particle summoned the Moment, a globule of stars reflecting the possibilities of all the lives of their world. The Resonance aimed its jet of light toward the globule, its ray invisibly thin. Fibres leached from the source, like branches attached to a stem, reaching toward the part of the jungle where Iravan and the falcon were perched. The yaksha was creating a web of supreme complexity, Ecstatically trajecting the jungle from the Deepness into the Moment.
The jungle changed.
All around them, the dust stilled as though it had come up against an invisible barrier. The wind stopped. The churning lessened. They waited there, man and beast, gazing around them, as for an instant, a brief blink, the falcon held back the storm wall in a perfect circle, freezing the earthrage itself.
Awe filled Iravan. The silence was overwhelming.
Is this what the falcon had wanted to show him? Iravan hadn’t seen it traject through an earthrage yet, but he had been studying the bird since their union, learning from it. This trajection was more complex than any he’d seen before. Was the yaksha showing him this technique so he could replicate it? The infinite blackness of the Deepness was its territory, like the stars in the Moment were his—Iravan was no master here.
But he was no beginner architect either. He was an Ecstatic now.
Goosebumps prickled his neck. He had accepted his own Ecstasy, but lifetimes of conditioning did not make it easy to reconcile with the idea that this was his natural state. Sometimes, at night, he still jolted awake, sweating and trembling. The nightmares had come true, he was an Ecstatic now, an outcast. He had become what he had been taught to fear, to eradicate—
The frozen storm around them trembled.
Iravan tasted wet earth. A crack appeared in the invisible barrier, then more fissures, like glass splitting. He blinked and nudged the falcon with a toe. The falcon could traject in an earthrage, but Iravan was mortal. The storm could kill him.
The falcon didn’t react.
Dust flicked at Iravan, then shards of jagged twigs. Wind whistled through the gaps, bringing in stray leaves and rain. Iravan nudged the falcon again, more urgently, fear replacing his awe.
Finally, the yaksha cocked its head. Uttering an angry yarp, it ruffled its feathers, unfolded its gigantic wings, and leapt into the storm, abandoning the barrier of the circle.
Wind rushed at Iravan at once, making his eyes water. Branches lashed, and grit filled his eyes, blurring his first vision. In the Deepness, the Resonance fluttered around him, and he caught a glimpse of himself over its mirrored surface, a reverberation of cold calculation that thrummed through the ever-present silence.
Iravan ducked low, wary of giving the yaksha any more instruction. The silence filled him again, a void ready to consume him. Twigs scored his skin, as the yaksha flew even lower within the storm. They entered a hurricane of thorns. Boulders streaked past Iravan. He sunk his head into the smoky feathers. He had thought once that he could control the yaksha, but how foolish he’d been. The creature might be a part of himself, but it was a stranger nonetheless, a higher being, complex and eternal. They had identified each other, perhaps even accepted one another. They had not yet understood each other.
That, perhaps, was why the yaksha had brought them here. That, perhaps, was the reason behind its torturing silence.
His own quiet had grown in him ever since he and the yaksha had repaired and remembered themselves in that vortex within the habitat. At first, the falcon’s silence had been considering but now it built into a roar in his mind and he knew it contained lifetimes of anger, lifetimes of reprisal. The yaksha was wild and feral. It had lived alone for thousands of years, but it had not forgiven him, and it had certainly not forgotten its own pain. The silence was not peaceful, it was punishment. Iravan’s only answer was regret.
He lifted his head slightly. A whipping branch filled his vision, and he ducked again to see it carried away by the earthrage. In the Deepness, the Resonance bobbed as though in laughter, and Iravan recognized in its fluttering a bitter satisfaction at making him flinch. Ahilya flashed into his mind. She had attacked him too when they’d left Nakshar together for her expedition. Had that only been a few months ago? He could hardly believe it.
“Enough,” Iravan growled, as another flying branch nearly took his head off.
The earthrage was coming, the split of another cosmic creature, and here they were performing what could only be described as self-flagellation.
He gathered his own energy in the Deepness, pointed the beam in the Moment—
The Resonance smashed into him.
The ray he had carefully aimed bounced past the star he had targeted. It hit something else, another star, and Iravan swung himself away from the Resonance in the Deepness, terrified.
What had he hit? What had they done? Had he hit the possibility of an ashram? Of a person? He spun around angrily in the Deepness toward the Resonance, but before he could gather his energy, the silvery particle trajected, and a stray vine looped itself around Iravan’s neck, choking him.
“Wh—” he gasped. What in rages? His hands scratched at the vine, scrabbling, even as they flew amidst the fracturing trees and the rising maelstrom. He couldn’t breathe. Tears sprang in his eyes. What the fuck are you doing? he screamed, spinning in the Deepness, trying to gather his desire to him.
But the Resonance knocked him away again, too easily.
He scratched at the vine around his throat, pulling it, but it only tightened. The creature could traject Ecstatically far better than he could ever hope to—it had thousands of years of mastery over him. It had held back the earthrage. Its Ecstasy was sharp enough to fly through the storm, trajecting and releasing each part of the jungle it flew through.
Gasping, Iravan darted in the Deepness, made to enter the Moment. The Resonance blocked his path, its flutters overtaking his second vision.
Iravan’s body seized. He coughed, grit filling his nose and his throat. He couldn’t breathe.
A memory flashed, of when his Two Visions had merged. He had become the magnaroot. They had tried to rip themselves apart. They had tried to kill himself.
His eyes closed against the horror. It was happening again.
The darkness began to take him. He pulled desperately, one weak tug, then another, his strength waning—
The vine came free in his hands.
Iravan wheezed, still atop the falcon, his Two Visions collapsing. The yaksha glided lower in a lazy circle, and swept down to a courtyard—the habitat, Iravan groggily recognized. His Garden. The creature came to a rest at the ledge outside the walled enclosure Iravan had built all those months before. It shook its wings and Iravan slithered down to the grassy floor, away from the beast.
The yaksha tilted its head to one side, its gaze cold and victorious.
It snapped its beak once.
Then, in a rush of wings, it was gone again, beyond the habitat into the earthrage. The glittering green dust of pure possibility—the everdust—rippled where the bird left the habitat’s safety. Iravan glimpsed the screaming face of the birthing earthrage, visible now from inside the habitat, attempting to break through the barrier of everdust. A slight terror gripped him. The habitat was no longer the degraded version he and Ahilya had once found. Their actions had mended this place, keeping the earthrage out. Yet there was no telling how long that would last.
He staggered through the jagged hole in the rock wall. A chair waited inside, one he had trajected for himself weeks ago. Iravan collapsed onto it, rubbing his neck, his vision swimming. He coughed, throat burning, and snatched the sungineering locket from around his neck. His fingers ran over at the ridges where the vine had pressed the chain of the locket into his skin.
