Preserving the Ingenairii by Jeffrey Quyle

like to see them please,” Alec replied.   Tritos gestured for them to follow, and he led the way out and over to the building next door.
                   Inside, beds and cots filled every room.   Alec anxiously scanned each face, recognizing many who he knew.   “She’s in the next room,” Tritos said quietly.
                   “Thank you,” Alec replied, and moved through the maze of unconscious ingenairii.   He spotted Bethany immediately, and watched a nursing assistant dribble some water between her lips.
                   “Are you adding anything to the water?” he asked the older man, who shook his head negatively.
                   “Let’s brew up a broth that will give them nutrients,” Alec said as he stroked Bethany ’s dull hair back off her forehead.   Her face was gaunt, as was the case with the others.   “Tritos, may I have some paper and a pencil?” Alec asked, and he proceeded to write a list of herbs and plants that were needed.   “Can someone be sent to market to get these?” he asked, handing the list to Tritos.   “We need to start getting some minerals and vitamins into them while we look for an answer to this,” he gestured around the room.
                   Tritos handed the list to another attendant and asked him to acquire everything.   “Aristotle said you’d come back,” Tritos said.   “When people started falling over, it happened fast.   Sadly, frighteningly fast.   Within a day there were only three of us left – Aristotle, Kinsey and me.
                   “We spent a day going through all the houses finding everyone, and getting them all together here, then instructing the servants to take care of them,” Tritos told them.   “Then the next night the three of us sat down and talked about how to find an answer.”
                   His eyes looked haunted.   “It was an awful time.   We all felt worse than helpless.   I saw people just collapse for no reason, over and over, and so had they.   Then when someone realized it was caused by trying to call upon their powers, people started to plan as if they knew what to plan for and how to protect themselves, and they still went down.   And we had no idea why – we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, and now it was different!” Tritos stopped talking and the others could see him reliving the painful memories.   Alec imagined the sense of horrific doom that must have hung over the heads of the last ingenairii to succumb; better to have gone fast, he thought to himself .
                   “Since Aristotle and Kinsey are both Spiritual ingenairii, they decided to try a plan to link to each other before they entered the energy realm, and Kinsey was going to try to pull Aristotle back if something seemed to be happening to him.   He was going to maintain a link so that at least she would know what was happening to him, and she could bring that knowledge back here to our world so that we could try to find a remedy.
                   “So they sat down together, at that table over there, holding hands,” he pointed.   “Then Aristotle passed out, and Kinsey gave a gasp, and she passed out too,” Tritos finished.   “And all I could do was call in the assistants to help pick them up and place them on cots.
                   “We’re out of room for more cots,” he said after a pause.   The room seemed darker now, Inga thought; she hoped it was just a cloud passing in front of the sun, because she felt Tritos’s anguish keenly.
                   “But I suppose that’s okay,” he added after another pause, “because we’re about out of ingenairii too.   Aren’t we Alec?”
                   Alec put his hand to his face and wiped away the moisture that brimmed in his eyes.   He felt sympathy as he listened to Tritos, and imagined