The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities by Jeffrey Quyle Read Free Book Online

more Rangers like that,” he urged, and jerked hard, pulling Lib with him in a rambling jaunt that soon brought them back to the location of the horses.
    There were sounds of shouts and roars coming from across the stream.  “You need to stay here,” Alec told Lib.  “Go to sleep and rest deeply,” he spoke, then combined his Spirit energy and Healer energy to slow down and sooth the man’s body and soul, making him collapse in a state of profound sleep.
    With Lib no longer available to persuade the plants with his powers, they no longer cooperated by opening in front of Alec, making his journey towards the next clash more difficult, once he cleared the brook.  He headed towards the shouting, a journey that took minutes, minutes that seemed far too long while he listened to screams of pain and anger.  At last he came to the clearing where three men were dead, and four others were fighting against Andi.  Amane was one of those fighting her, Alec saw in disbelief, realizing how profoundly the evil must be possessing the souls of those it came in contact with.
    Alec re-engaged his Air powers once again, diminishing his Spirit energies to the lowest level he felt kept the evil from infecting his own soul, warily cognizant of it virtually flickering within his peripheral vision as it grasped to capture him inside its evil infection as well.  He stood unobserved by the combatants and pondered what strategy to use.
    He sent his Air energies out to create walls among those who were fighting, astonishing them as their blades and bodies bumped against the invisible constraints, then he walked in among them, using his power to spread them widely apart from each other.
    He approached Andi first, stopping directly in front of her.  “Traitor!”  she shouted at him.  “I gave you my love, I gave you my devotion, my body, I have given you everything I have Alec!  I hate you!” she screamed with passion and true hatred.  Alec looked back at the other members of the group, confirming that they were so widely separated from each other that they would not have time to inflict harm upon him or each other, once he released his Air energies, as he was going to have to do.
    “Andi,” he said softly, opening a hole in the air curtain tha t divided them, as she stood up right against it, pressing forward to try to reach through it, to do violence against him.  He reached through to grab her and let his Spirit energy calm her.
    I’m sorry for the pain I’ve given you ; I do admire and respect you , he told her softly as the evil that possessed her was banished.  He felt the artificial anger drop away, and saw the rage leave her face.  With the threat that she would attack him removed, he dropped his Air energies, and seized his Healer energies.
    “Alec?  What?” she started to ask a question, when he placed her in a deep slumber as well, then turned, and reengaged his Air powers to re-divide the other, still-infected men who were converging upon his location, and slowly, one-by-one, put each of them through the same process of being relieved of their infection, then dropped into the heavy sleep he induced within them.  He listened to their screams and curses and challenges which he soothed away, unmoved by any, except the words he had heard first from Andi.
    He finished at last, having used his energies extensively for the first time since his reawakening, and felt weariness already starting to consume him because of his exertions.  Alec dropped his energies other than his Spiritual powers, and began to grimly move towards the center of the dark forces he detected in the heart of the forest.  With its other victims neutralized, all of the evil energy was focused upon him, and he found that he had to increase the amount of Spiritual energy he used to protect himself from infection by the madness that had overcome his companions.  As he drew closer to the heart of the darkness, fighting through more tangles, climbing up