The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Eleven Endings and Beginnings

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

 — Lucius Annaeus Seneca (circa 4 BCE — 65 CE)

While the others were still clearly uncomfortable with the plan the group had quickly cobbled together, Rhea could see that Selene was at peace with herself. Surprising herself, Rhea realized that she was too. It was not that she was looking forward to the upcoming battle; Rhea knew she wasn’t. Nor was it a death wish, either because she was still stuck in her current gender, or because that rat Tim had dumped her. The rules might be different for males and females, but there were still rules and Rhea knew that she was a quick study. Similarly, Tim’s actions were of surprisingly little import, as every glance at her gorgeous, redheaded twin only reinforced her opinion that he was a fool, and she hadn’t made it to starting quarterback by letting other people rattle her. It was… acceptance. Rhea had finally admitted to herself that she was comfortable with who she now was; Rhea Lanyon, best friend to Selene Utterson, only child of Herbert and Emily Lanyon, competent and capable young adult woman. Tearing herself away from her ruminations, she quickly grasped the essentials of the plan that was unfolding.

It was a simple plan. Emily, Herbert and Akcuanrut slowly walked through the huge carved oak doors of the main entrance and down the center aisle, but not before everyone else had spread out and surreptitiously positioned themselves by the other entrances. Phil crawled down the left aisle while George, silently berating himself for not being in better shape, crawled down the right aisle while trying not to let his ragged breathing become loud enough to echo in the otherwise empty chapel. Selene and Rhea were wraiths, sneaking in the side fire exits — which they'd somehow managed to open without a sound — and hovering at either edge of the pulpit, hidden by the richly brocaded curtains that framed it. Only Lucille was not present. She had another task to complete, securing the Heart so that Akcuanrut could take it back when Na-Noc had been defeated.

Na-Noc was a glowing, pulsating blob partially hidden behind the altar. The sing-song sound of chanting drifted out to the main area of the chapel. He didn’t respond as Akcuanrut and the two centaurs noisily strode down the aisle, the sound of echoing hooves hopefully masking any sounds the others might make.

“Na-Noc,” Akcuanrut called out as the trio stopped by the first row of seats.

A second mouth — or more accurately a caricature of a mouth — formed while the first continued to chant. “Ah, Akcuanrut — and I see you’ve brought the others — how convenient. Will you approach more closely, so that I may consume you? Or may I again look forward to the sport of battle?” A serpentine tongue slithered from the depths of its mouth to lick its misshapen lips in anticipation. A chitinous arm formed briefly, only to be sucked back in and replaced by a tail reminiscent of a huge rat’s, before it too was sucked back into the blob.

Akcuanrut had been shocked by the raw power within the building. From the outside, he’d recognized the building as a site of magical power — through the faint emanations seeping out — but some quirk of the structure’s design had retained the vast majority of its power within its walls. Squaring his shoulders, he stopped several feet from the pulpit. “You seem to be having control problems, Na-Noc. Let me help you, why don’t you?”

“I think not, little man. Soon I will have all the power I need. I will consume you all and recover the Heart. Then, I will return home in triumph.”

“And to what will you return? To the fighting pit where the Gods imprisoned you? You were once a friend. Is there no chance of rekindling that friendship?”

“Fool! Do you think I would permit that? With this power, I can be safe from their manipulations and yours, old man. Now approach and be eaten.”

“I think not, ‘gelatine-for-brains’.” Selene stepped out from behind the drapery that had hidden her. Sword drawn, Rhea also stepped into view.

“I wondered how long you two would cower in the shadows. Why don’t the other two of you show yourselves and we can end this game?” Phil and George hesitantly rose from behind the pews that had hidden them. Each held a long dagger — albeit inexpertly — borrowed from the barbarian women's seemingly endless supply.

Akcuanrut began to chant. At the first words, a ripple passed over Na-Noc, as if he were chilled, but the only clear response was the formation of a third mouth that began chanting a counterpoint to the wizard’s words, somehow different enough to negate the affects of Akcuanrut’s words. From each side, the barbarian women stalked toward Na-Noc, swords at the ready and grim smiles on their faces.

“Yes. Come to me, my pretty ones. Let us finish this at last,” the tongue from the first mouth seemed to be making an obscene gesture as the lips curled into an ugly sneer.

“Mouthy little blob, isn’t he, Selene?” Rhea laughed.

“All talk and no action, I’ll bet,” Selene quipped back.

With a roar, Na-Noc shot pseudopods directly towards the two swordswomen, each with a sharply pointed and barbed tip. Phil gasped at the incredible speed of the projectiles while George wailed out “No!” in fear for his ex-son’s life. Yet, with equal speed swords flashed and a truncated piece of Na-Noc dropped to the floor.

Before they could slither back to the main body, twin swords skewered them and flung them into the corner near Phil. As soon as they touched each other, they combined into a single blob and again began slithering back towards Na-Noc.

Phil cleared his throat and hesitantly began the chant Akcuanrut had taught him. Even seeing two centaurs and the weird talking blob on the pulpit had not fully convinced Phil of the existence of real magic. Yet, at the first words of the chant, the small blob shuddered and stopped its movement toward Na-Noc, as Phil felt a rush of spiritual power through his body. It was as if there was suddenly an invisible wall corralling the little blob that it couldn’t pass beyond. Over. Under. Around. The small blob tried them all — and failed. Instead of rejoining with Na-Noc, it slowly retreated as the unseen wall pushed it back towards the corner of the church by Phil and lay there quivering.

Surprised, Phil stopped, only to see the blob rapidly scurry back towards Na-Noc again. Fearful that it would return to the main body, Phil quickly began chanting again; this time louder than before. It was as if the blob had hit a brick wall again. With more confidence now, Phil began to chant even louder and watched the blob slowly move back until it was pressed against the wall near him.

Howling in rage, Na-Noc threw out more chitinous pseudopods, this time at Akcuanrut and the two centaurs. Herbert screamed in fear and Emily screamed in rage. They both grabbed hands and reared up on their hind legs as instructed by Akcuanrut, lashing out furiously with their forelegs with incredible speed and accuracy. Akcuanrut merely chanted louder, apparently unconcerned, but both centaurs were sure they were about to be absorbed.

Hooves struck chitin and there was a blinding flash of light. Two more lumps of Na-Noc went flying into the other corner of the church near George. As with the first segments, they merged on landing, but cowered against the wall.

“Way to go, Mom! Do it again, Dad!” Rhea glanced away from her furious sword work just long enough to insure that they were safe and to praise her parents.

“Good work, Emily, Herbert!” George Utterson called out from the other side of chapel. “It looks like centaur hooves really are almost as powerful magically as unicorn horns.” Turning back to the blob in the corner, he looked at his dagger and wondered how he could possibly keep the lump before him from scurrying back to Na-Noc. Seeking frantically for something better to use, he grabbed a hymnal and threw it at the small blob — and was surprised when it shied away from it.

Throwing another hymnal, the blob shied away again. George thought he heard a faint scream of fear. Quickly, George ran down the aisle, grabbing as many hymnals as he could from the racks on the backs of the pews and threw them at the blob. Each time, it backed away and sought another route back to Na-Noc, one that avoided touching the book or even the space above it.

One book struck it and there was a puff of foul-smelling steam and smoke, and a loud hiss, followed by a high-pitched screech of pain from both the surrounded blob and from Na-Noc, whose chanting faltered for a moment before it resumed. Where the hymnal had struck, there was a burn mark, and the blob seemed smaller, as if the book had burned some of it away. George yelled out his discovery to the others and began tossing more books, this time directly at the blob he was guarding.

From this point on things settled into a pattern. Rhea and Selene sparred with Na-Noc. Every now and then they managed to chop off pieces of blob and toss them into the corners, where Phil chanted half of them into submission and George used the hymnals to both contain the other half of them, and burn a good portion away to boot, with a nasty stench of burning flesh.

Akcuanrut chanted away, beads of sweat forming from his efforts, while Herbert and Emily protected him with flashing hooves. With sufficient time, they would win, but time was against them. Everyone could feel the concentration of magical power as a palpable and growing weight in the air. Na-Noc had to be nearing the conclusion of the incantation he was chanting.

“Yoo-hoo! Hello, everyone. I found it. I’ve brought the stone.” Lucille Utterson blew into the church with the same fanfare and panache that she used when entering her Garden Club. “Emily? When’s the last time you cleaned that closet, dear. I had to wade through….”

Before she was half way down the center aisle to hand the stone to Emily, a long thin pseudopod shot up towards the ceiling. It passed over the heads and reaches of the two barbarian women. Still on the rise, it even passed beyond the reach of the centaurs, despite their rearing up to protect Akcuanrut. After it cleared the centaurs, it dived down, directly at Lucille, from whom it plucked the Heart of Virtue from a shocked, and for once speechless, Lucille. Maintaining the same high arc over everyone’s heads, it quickly pulled back into the main blob and disappeared into the center of the writhing mass.

Even before the stone reached the pulpit, and without missing a beat in its chant, Na-Noc began to gloat with another mouth. “I told you I was invincible. I told you that you could not defeat me. Drop your weapons and bow before me now and I may let you live to serve me, else die like the fleas you are.”

“Big talk, blob boy,” Selene spit out and batted a chitinous pseudopod far enough aside to lop it off with her next stroke. Na-Noc bellowed in pain, and angrily concentrated two pseudopods on Selene, to the exception of the others.

Free of the blob’s attention for a moment, Rhea charged onto the pulpit and overturned the lectern onto Na-Noc. There was a tremendous cloud of horrible smoke, and a seething hiss that almost drowned out the sound of Na-Noc bellowing from all three mouths.

Na-Noc’s chant had finally been interrupted, but before anyone could cheer, the chanting began again. A gentle breeze started and quickly grew in strength. Within seconds it was gusting about, blowing the hymnals into the air — and still gaining strength.

“Oh, hell,” Rhea got out before the roar of the wind drowned out all conversation. “I have a bad feeling about this.” She grabbed for a pew and hoped everyone else had done the same, but the flying debris was so thick she couldn’t see anyone else.

A thin tinkling sound could be heard momentarily above the wind as the stained glass clerestory windows imploded inward. A second later Rhea had a dozen small scratches over her body, but Na-Noc screamed in anguish and fury.

Something large and vaguely humanoid flew by her head and without thinking she released one hand from its death grip on the now rocking and shuddering pew. Her free hand lunged out to grab the shape — a shape that looked very much like Lucille Utterson — and caught the hem of her skirt. The shape flew past, leaving nothing but a small piece of fabric in Rhea’s hand. Then something very large crashed into Rhea’s head and everything went black.

“She’s coming around.” A warm body lunged on top of her and before Rhea could reach for her best dagger — the dagger she’d foolishly given to Phil — the shape began hugging and kissing her.

“Ouch. Stop that. My head hurts, my body hurts. Heck, even my lips hurt. What the heck happened?” she asked as she struggled to push the still-slightly-blurred shape of her redheaded twin away and sit up.

“Rhea, you watch your language, young man — er, young woman.” It was a deep voice from behind her and turning she realized it was her mother standing there with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Next to him was Rhea’s father pacing nervously back and forth. Beside him was Akcuanrut, muttering and making strange gestures by a nearby tree and Phil, still handsomely clad in Highland kilt and tartan, shifting nervously from foot to foot beside the wizard.

“Sorry, Mom; still learning this girl stuff. I seems that old habits die hard. What happened?”

“Na-Noc created a portal.”

“Na-Noc. Where the he…. Unh, where is he? And when did he learn to do magic?”

“Gone, dear, at least most of what was left of him. And he has the Heart of Virtue. As to his mastery of magic, Akcuanrut believes he must have learned something from the Dark Gods, but been prevented from using it by them until he got to our world and out from under their control.”

“Yes, Rhea,” a female voice intruded. “We’re back on Akcuanrut’s world. Perhaps I’d better recap a bit.”

Herbert Lanyon took Rhea’s immediate groan as enthusiastic assent. “Yes, Rhea,” she said in a tone as plonking as she had often been before her recent changes, “we’re back on Akcuanrut’s world. Maybe I’d better recap a bit.”

Herbert Lanyon took Rhea’s next and louder groan as further and more enthusiastic assent. “Na-Noc managed to create a portal back to his world. He went through it along with you, Selene, Phil, Akcuanrut, your mother, and me.”

“What about Mr. and Mrs. Utterson? I don’t see them, and they must have been sucked in too. I remember trying to grab her as she flew by me.” Rhea saw the pained look on Selene’s face and was immediately sorry she’d asked.

“They were. We think Na-Noc absorbed my Mom and Dad,” was her grim reply.

Rhea felt tears stinging at her eyes and said, “I'm so sorry, honey,” then quickly changed the subject. “Did I hear you say that Na-Noc was gone ‘mostly’? ”

Herbert pointed. Under the tree, now only partially obscured by Phil and Akcuanrut and surrounded by hymnals and a shattered pile of stained glass, was a pulsating blob. As she watched, it transformed into a midget D’lon-Ra, not more then a foot in height, looking a bit like an assemblage of marshmallows, in that his features seemed somehow blurred, softened around the edges, he had not a single hair on his body, and his joints were no longer angular, but rather rounded, just what one might expect for a creature molded out of gelatine.

“What’s with mini-Na-Noc?”

“It claims to be D’lon-Ra,” Selene replied, dagger in hand, eyes never leaving the miniature “Emperor’s Hero.”

“I am D’lon-Ra!” It tried for a bellow, but it sounded more like the shrill scream of an angry Blue Jay.

“Supposedly, the hymnals and stained glass burned out the evil portions of the various souls Na-Noc had absorbed,” the female centaur said with more than a hint of her former classroom manner, “and little ‘D’lon-Ra’ here was the strongest of the ‘good’ personalities left. The interesting feature of this transformation is that it, or he, claims there is still a small link between Na-Noc and himself. He claims he can tell us where the vile creature currently resides — and thus the Heart of Virtue  — which is more than Akcuanrut can do at the moment.”

“What’s the Wiz’s problem?”

“Something akin to a magical sprain,” she said. “Apparently, he over-extended himself fighting Na-Noc and needs time to recover.”

“So, in other words, he can’t send us home and he can’t fight Na-Noc, let alone the Dark Gods. We’re stuck here on a world about to be overrun by evil.”

“Yes, dear. That’s a rather succinct, if grim, summary,” Herbert acknowledged.

With a final groan, Rhea forced herself to stand and recovered her weapons. Sheathing her sword, she stalked over to the tree and kicked the hymnals aside to let the midget D’lon-Ra out before anyone could object. “Okay, Lassie. Show us the way.”

“Who is this ‘Lassie?’ I am D’lon-Ra,” it grumbled but pointed. “The Evil One is that way.”

“Rhea, what’s the meaning of this? Where are you going?”

“Well, hopefully we’re all going,” she glanced from face to face, judging their willingness to join her quest. “As to where we’re going, that should be obvious. We’re going to find and destroy old blob-boy, recover the Heart of Virtue, bring it to the capital, whatever Acky over there calls it, and save the world from the powers of Darkness. Then, as the reward for our good deeds, the folks at the Wizard’s College are da… unh, very sure to show their undying gratitude by sending us back home, preferably in our own bodies.”

Herbert Lanyon’s only response was, “Oh.”

Rhea watched the reincarnated D’lon-Ra trot off down a dirt path amongst the trees. Akcuanrut followed immediately behind, still muttering, and Phil trailed after the old wizard, listening intently. Emily and Herbert looked from spouse to kids and back. Herbert held out a hand to her wife and hand-in-hand they slowly paced off after the others.

“Let’s go. We’ve got a job to do.” Rhea waited for Selene, a bit surprised that she would be the last.

A lopsided smile spread over the redheaded barbarian woman’s face. Striding over to Rhea, she put an arm over her blonde twin’s shoulder and dragged her after the others. Within five paces, they were skipping along, arm in arm, singing “We’re Off to See the Wizard” from The Wizard of Oz.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved