The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Alec spotted a sorcerer scuttling from one building, through an open-air passageway to another. He moved himself down to the battlefield around the gate, where the Ajacii were taking on mortal guards as well as Warrior ingenairii who were coming to protect their fortress from the unexpected attack. The ingenairii were confused and upset by the combat abilities of their opponents, unknown fighters who battled them evenly without having any discernable Warrior marks.

  “Malia!” Alec called one of the squad leaders. “We’re going to go attack sorcerers,” he told her and another Ajax who came in response to his shout. With the woman and man gathered in his arms, Alec took them on the short jump to the doorway the sorcerer had fled through, and the three burst into the room with knives and swords.

  A rainstorm of arrows came flying at them, and Alec hastily threw up a shield of air as Malia fell to the ground with two arrows in her shoulder. Alec glanced at the roomful of sorcerers, at least a half dozen, mixed with many others, presumably mortal guards.

  He channeled his light energy into the searing beam that burnt everything it touched, then knelt and swept it just above the floor around the width of the room, burning the feet of most of the others, and knocked three quarters of his targets to the ground. “Go get them!” he barked at the unharmed Tred, then pulled the arrows from Malia, wincing as he felt the flesh tear, but applying Healing energy even as he tossed the arrows away.

  Both Malia and he stood, and he redirected his energy to his Warrior abilities. The two joined Tred in battle before he could be overwhelmed, and they slaughtered all those who could not hobble away down a narrow, dark hallway in the back of the room.

  “Stop!” Alec commanded before Tred could follow the escapees into the unknown. “That could be a trap in there,” he explained. “We’ll find plenty of other hunting in healthier-looking places,” he added, satisfied with the carnage they had inflicted on the sorcerers. They walked out the door they had arrived through, then started working their way towards the front of the fortress, fighting sporadically, but finding no great opposition until they returned to where the other Ajacii were pinned down by a heavy force of Warrior ingenairii and guards.

  Five Ajacii were lying dead in the center of the yard, while others were trapped, pinned down by a non-stop stream of arrows being fired from two locations. At least three ingenairii in each location had to be responsible for such lethal force, Alec judged; he stood against the wall directly beneath one of the nests, and used his Stone energy to make the floor beneath the archers collapse outward, dropping them thirty feet downward to land on the floor of the yard, their bodies already dead – pierced by Ajacii arrows that were shot as the ingenairii fell.

  Alec crossed the yard towards the other wall that held a window full of ingenairii archers, and the arrows ceased to fly as the archers abandoned their post to flee in advance of the action they had seen Alec take against their companions. Alec closed the window with solid stone, stretching the structure of the surrounding wall to eliminate the shooting blind. “Tred, take your squad that way, and Malia you take yours that way,” Alec directed his commanders to gather their forces and begin to sweep around the interior perimeter of the fortress.

  He plunged directly forward, into the central building of the fortress complex, as his allies went around either side. There had been no sign of Hellmann yet. They had been at the fortress for nearly an hour, and Hellmann had not appeared yet, nor had any demon been summoned so far.

  Alec could not understand why Hellmann would remain absent from the combat, unless he was not physically present at the fortress at all. Was it possible the demigod had gone elsewhere, perhaps to lead the war campaign at the lacertii front?

  He felt the stirring of a nauseous pain in the back of his head, and his stomach started to churn.

  There was a demon being summoned somewhere. Alec charged through a doorway in front of him and into an open courtyard, where a small crowd of people were gathered – a few sorceresses, but mostly people not wearing black, perhaps Spiritual ingenairii, he guessed. If so, they posed an immediate threat to him, and he responded by exercising his Light energy again, then mercilessly began to sweep the burning line at waist height across the court yard killing, injuring, and frightening over a score of victims immediately.

  There could be no mercy, he told himself as he listened to the screams of the victims. He began tossing knives from his bandoliers at those who appeared ready to fight him or flee, then walked among the dead, retrieving his blades as he felt the pain of a demon materializing somewhere nearby. He stopped and bent at the waist, his hands on his knees, as he vomited in the instinctive reaction his body always responded with at the arrival of a demon.

  A sharp, painful stroke across the back of his neck nearly drove him into the ground. Alec pulled himself to the side, activating his Warrior energies again as he hit the ground, rolled to his feet and pulled his sword.

  Andi stood before him, with an unpleasant grin on her face. It was the arrival of Hellmann, entering the fray at last.

  Chapter 27 – Hellmann and Andi and Alec

  Alec stood and held his sword defensively, suddenly feeling the beginnings of weariness that was setting in from his use of multiple energies throughout the battle.

  “Fight him, Andi. Fight him!” Alec suddenly urged. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to say it, but he knew his heart wanted to speak to Andi, to acknowledge her existence and energetic spirit. Fight him, Andi, and I’ll fight him for you.

  “Even if she hears you, it will not matter. Resistance is futile,” the deep voice that issued from Andi’s mouth was clearly Hellmann’s. “She has not gone down completely easily. She has almost resisted a time or two. I can understand why you wanted to keep her as a pet,” Hellmann commented.

  “She’s not a pet. She’s a person, an individual, and one who has not rejected reality to try to live up to an oversized ego, like you have for millennia. What was it like, spending ten thousand years imprisoned, living on nothing but the lies you told yourself about how you failed to win your battles?” Alec tried to taunt Hellmann, waiting to see what would happen. He still had no precise plan, even now in the midst of the combat, and would have to react instead of initiate, especially with his energies beginning to dwindle.

  “You had a chance once, didn’t you? You had two chances, to be precise, and failed them both, I believe?” Alec added more fuel to the fire of Hellmann’s resentment and anger. “You can hardly be a god when you consistently lose battles with mortals, can you?”

  Enraged, his opponent blindly lashed out, growing in size at the same time she stabbed at Alec with a sword, moving the blade faster than any other ingenaire or Ajax in the battle around them could have. Alec felt a slight nick in his ribs as he evaded the stab, and returned with a counterattack that came close but missed Andi’s left shoulder.

  Hellmann had magnified the body to twice its real height, now towering over Alec, and Alec idly wondered for a second what Hellmann did to achieve the stunning growth. A ring of hot fire suddenly erupted around Alec, encircling him in intense heat that made his hair start to curl. Alec instantly separated out his powers, and used his Air energy to blow the heat away from him, and towards Hellmann, then he propelled himself upward on a jet of Air as Hellmann closed Andi’s eyes momentarily in response to the heat. Alec hovered directly above his opponent.

  Hellmann looked around, and extinguished the fire, without looking up. “Come back, coward!” the monster screamed, and Alec released his Air energy. He engaged his Spirit energy fully as he fell upon Hellmann, dropping like a spider on an unsuspecting fly. Alec wrapped his arms around Andi’s expanded neck, trying to cut off the flow of blood and cause the body to fall unconscious, as he used his Spirit energy to try to drill past Hellmann’s psyche to reach Andi herself. I’m here fighting for you, my love, he projected his thoughts inward, hoping that he could reach her. We can win this! He added, just before the beefy arms managed to pry him loose and fli
ng him to the ground.

  Alec felt stunned by the hard impact he suffered when he hit the courtyard floor, but managed to roll quickly to the side, as Hellmann stood panting for breath. Alec knew he needed to stay on the offensive, and threw himself in a hard tackle at the sturdy legs before him, and as he did, he realized again how limited his options were. He had to try to find a way to disable the body without destroying it, and hopefully without inflicting pain or harm on Andi.

  His tackle knocked the giant backwards, but not to the ground, and a massive fist connected with his jaw throwing him five yards away.

  A sudden arrow flew through the air and struck Andi, sticking in the giant’s right shoulder, and drawing a bellow. Alec looked up and saw Tred and a pair of Ajacii entering the courtyard from the right, and he saw Hellmann pull the arrow out of her flesh as though it were merely a bug’s stinger, then point her finger at the trio.

  Without knowing what Hellmann was about to do, Alec instinctively threw up a disk of solid Air in front of the men to protect them as a swarm of sharpened metal darts shot forth from Hellmann, only to strike the air and fall to the ground.

  “Go back!” Alec shouted. “You can’t help here!” He jumped up, dropped his Air energy, then adopted his Warrior energy again and moved quickly as Hellmann turned back towards him. But before Alec could prepare to protect himself, Hellmann twisted rapidly, turning back to the Ajacii and shooting another round of his deadly darts at them, crumpling them all into bloody piles on the stones of the courtyard floor.

  Alec felt a moan of regret escape his mouth, and he charged towards Hellmann in true anger and frustration, forgetting that he sought to do no harm to the body he faced. He leapt at the giant and again closed his hands around the wide neck, seeing the monster grin at him with a murderous confidence.

  Hellmann closed her arms around Alec, not seeking to pull him away, but instead trying to crush him. Alec kicked and kneed and choked harder, but without success, as he felt the tension in his spine starting to surpass his limits to withstand. Alec invoked his Traveler power and translocated himself to the roof of the building next to the courtyard, then crouched down as he relied on his Healer power to fix the injuries he had suffered.

  Alec felt a momentary sense of exultation from somewhere; Alec! he felt Andi’s true voice ring out, and he knew that his beloved was still fighting Hellmann from within, and had managed to emerge from under Hellmann’s smothering power.

  I feel you! he responded with glee, overjoyed by Andi’s momentary success, then yelped in surprise as the building beneath him collapsed, and Hellmann caused a deluge of thousands of gallons of water to trap him in a rapidly filling pool within the building. Alec used his Traveler energies to propel himself to the courtyard, next to the bodies of the dead Ajacii. He picked up a bow and arrow from one of the men and began firing a rapid series of arrows at Andi’s legs, then propelled himself high into the air with his Air energies, before causing the stones of the courtyard to melt and grab the ankles of Hellmann.

  The sunlight above suddenly began to make the flesh on his back sizzle and burn, causing Alec to drop his Stone attack on Hellmann, and form a disk of dense, cloudy air over him, shading him from Hellmann’s attack, while he dropped to the ground and healed himself; his energies were dwindling rapidly as the engagement stretched out. Alec felt a sudden sense of panic, as he realized how badly the battle was going. He had not figured out any means of defeating Hellmann in Andi’s body, and he was suffering badly in the current battle. He could not retreat from the battle either, for that would leave the Ajacii in the fortress defenseless against slaughter by Hellmann.

  Just as he contemplated the lack of alternatives available, Hellmann charged at Alec with her sword drawn, and swung wildly at him. Alec drew his own sword again, in time to block the blow, but he was driven to his knees by the raw physical strength of the enlarged giant. The sword raised over him to strike again, and Alec raised his blade defensively, when Andi’s foot struck as fast as a coiled snake and landed painfully in his undefended face, snapping his neck backwards, just before the sword stabbed downward.

  The sharp blade sliced through Alec’s stomach piercing his internal organs as it drove savagely through him.

  Alec weakly grasped his hands around the hand that held the hilt of the sword, then looked up at Andi’s face above him, twisted by the hatred that Hellmann held. “Heal yourself of that!” Hellmann snarled.

  Oh Alec, I’ve tried to fight him for you, Andi cried momentarily, as Hellmann’s attention to keeping her imprisoned slipped while he gloated.

  Alec realized that his body was mortally wounded. He reached desperately for the last shred of ingenaire energy he could grasp, as he felt life ebbing away, and he engaged his Traveler energy to journey away from the courtyard, away from Michian, away from the world even. With a last desperate heave, Alec translocated his body into the axis mundi of the energy realm.

  Chapter 28 – The Great Victory

  Alec lay on the floor of the axis mundi, feeling the blood seep out of him as the energy of the realm crept in. He felt the availability of the nearby Healing power, and he let his spirit call the energy to him, willing the energy to seep away from the chamber it was contained in, trickling towards him like a tiny rivulet of spilt milk running across a kitchen floor. He felt the steady stream of the power reach him, and he grasped it, bathing his internal wounds with the power, then healing the muscles and skin and the other damaged parts of his body. He slowly rebuilt himself to health, then released his call upon it, and let the power return to its natural boundary.

  He had to go back, he knew. Andi needed him, the Ajacii needed him, the whole world needed him to battle and beat Hellmann.

  But he had just proven that it was a battle he could not win. John Mark had been right – he could not win the battle alone. Nor could he win it with the Ajacii as allies against Hellmann. There was no one else he could turn to in the battle against Hellmann except Andi.

  Which is what he could do, he realized with a start. It was the plain answer, the obvious answer to the problem. He could turn to Andi and fight with her – his soul and her soul together, not a physical battle, not at first, but a battle of spirits, fighting for control of the body Hellmann had usurped. Alec and Andi were a unique pair of spirits, a unitary being of two spirits, forged into a single, shared awareness by their extraordinary experience in Woven.

  As a single, unified spirit they could fight Hellmann as more than an equal – they could seize control of the body.

  But what would they do with the defeated spirit of Hellmann once they won the physical battle? Alec could not imagine forever trying to remain vigilant as the jailer of a hostile spirit trapped within one’s own body, fighting against possession through eternity. Hellmann had been unable to keep Andi under control while he tried to fight Alec: how could Alec and Andi keep Hellmann permanently bottled up within themselves?

  There was a place, a way to banish Hellmann, Alec realized, a desperate means that would carry risks and pain, but that promised the only possible permanent solution to the problem.

  He was sitting up, but then he lay back down on his back. He knew what he was about to do. He prepared an explanation of his plan, at least the initial part, an explanation that could be distilled into a brief flash of thought, one that he could share with Andi the moment they reunited, so that she instantly understood his intention and could engage in the same battle as he, to carry out the same gambit.

  Then he closed his eyes, and he flung his spirit from his body, as he had done when he fought the demon in the energy realm centuries before. His body resided peacefully as he looked back at it for a moment, then he moved away, and into the Spirit energy realm. He sped through the Spirit realm, and went to the portal, the portal that led back to their own physical world. He could see the flows of energy that were trailing away, being used by the ingenairii of the world, and he recognized the darkest of the dark ones, the one that was Hellmann’s u
se of the energy, which the monster tapped into as his weapon for keeping Andi trapped below his own Spirit.

  Alec went to the space between the worlds, the gray emptiness, then he inserted himself into Hellmann’s stream of Spirit energy, and was drawn into the giant entity. As soon as he was within the tangled psychic entity, he broke free, feeling the wrenching discomfort and confusion he created in Hellmann’s awareness, and darted towards the bright globe he saw below him, the spiritual entity that was the core of Andi.

  His spirit united with hers in an explosive union, and he released the knowledge and concept he had prepared, receiving her instant understanding and agreement to comply. Their two energies became one, and the single entity battered against the unprepared spirit of Hellmann above and around them, grappling for dominance and freedom.

  Hellmann was in the midst of an attack on the Ajacii, Alec/Andi realized, and they battled to seize control of their common body, sending Hellmann’s attack off-course, sending the giant body blundering backwards away from the cowering survivors of the Ajacii contingent, shrinking Andi’s body back to normal size as Hellmann focused all of his attention only upon the battle taking place within his possessed body.

  Alec/Andi battered at Hellmann, challenging his power, and showing the greater power the two of them exercised, as they both called upon the Spirit power together and combined their energy, male and female, both great, but even greater still as they complemented and sustained each other.

  Hellmann fought back, trying to both overwhelm them and flee from them. The Andi portion of their consciousness grabbed hold of Hellmann and flailed at him, knocking him about as he began to panic. Alec engaged his Traveler energy, and took their single body to the one place where he prayed he could permanently banish Hellmann from the world.

  They arrived in John Mark’s cave, the far off portal of holy power. They went to the chamber where the power was fearful, when Alec had seen the greatest and worst of holy energy.