Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves

by Richard M. Heredia

  Limitless?

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  Elena was not sure if it had been Kimberly or Derek who had asked the question. It could have been both.

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  ~ 15 ~

  Field Medicine

  Day Four, Sunday, In the Seconds That Followed…

  There was a brief silence as the group digested what Joaquin had said.

  Derek and Kimberly were glancing around as though the others were speaking Latin of a sudden.

  Louis walked into their midst, his eyes on Elena.

  She spoke. “Do you think I could be that… I don’t know, that powerful?” It was a meek query, as if the thought of being the wielder of boundless magic scared her and yet, piqued her curiosity at the same time.

  Joaquin nodded. “You are the Illuminai, the Maestro of the Light. But, unlike your sister, who is the Flěsch - the Quick and the Flash - or Jason, who is the Blitz - the Tower of Strength - your Gift is stronger. I can feel it as sure as I feel the pull of gravity on my body. You will become a force of unimaginable reckoning.” He was serious. “After your brother, the Kring-Hël - the Light of the World and the Bringer of Truth - your Gift ranks high. It could be just beneath the power of the Üllimëntai, the Elemental, in both potency and potential. In fact, the scope of you Gift is so massive it may be on par with that of the Elemental.

  “I’m not completely certain yet. But I have this nagging thought, this persistent notion that one day you will find a way to save us all,” answered Joaquin. His voice carried. He wanted to make sure they all understood. His words were not for Elena alone.

  Still, his comment made her frown and she was about to reply.

  “Besides,” he went on, smiling warmly at her, “you were the only one who could’ve saved Hyun from the Vürmm. Calling the light in the manner you did saved the day. None of us, not even the Fist, could’ve done what you did just then.” He tilted his head toward the hunks of flesh lying not too far away from them, still smoldering and reeking in the snow.

  “She did that?” interjected Kimberly, her eyes bulging in amazement. She looked back at the small girl not sure what to think. She was uncertain if they were messing around with her or if they were being genuine.

  “Yes,” replied Joaquin with brevity. Then, he was staring back down at Hyun, who, in turn, was peering through her aches and pains at Elena with a strange look upon of her visage.

  Elena stared back as unsure as Kimberly.

  “Well, I think it’s totally awesome, Elena! You can blast fools out of the sky faster than a blink of an eye. I mean, just like those slug-things in the cave, the spiders had no chance against you,” blurted Louis. He had a huge, goofy grin dominating most of his face, his eyes gleaming with sincerity.

  “But, how did she do it?” asked Kimberly. Her eyes had not left Elena nor had her expression changed. “How could she do it?”

  “The fact that she can control light in almost any guise, the fact she can manipulate it, form it and bend it to her will is the reason why we're here in the Melded World in the first place,” explained Joaquin.

  Elena could sense he was trying not to sensationalize the subject. He was all too aware Kimberly would be hard-pressed to believe anything supernatural existed. She did not seem like the kind of girl who believed in anything preternatural. She was too closed-off to anything extraordinary and would pass it off as a hoax before she would make herself believe.

  “We’re all here because of her?” accused Kimberly, a thin slice of anger in her voice. She tempered the tone quick when Elena’s full attention trained on her. “I mean, I didn’t mean, she was too blame or anything,” she added. It was a hurried breath with an uneasy smile back in the nine-year-olds’ direction. She was wary of the electric fury buried within the little girl.

  “You’re still so full of it, Kim,” chided Derek.

  “Shut-up, Derek, you little –,” Anthony cut her off.

  “Alright! That’s enough!” Unlike the norm, he was commanding this time.

  Elena could tell he had come to his wits’ end. His brow was brooding and dark, forbidding, like her father would wear at times.

  Everyone fell silent.

  “You guys need to learn to keep things a little more quiet when we are out in the open. The reason why those damned spider-things attacked us was because they heard you guys yelling like spoiled brats. You’re going to have to control yourselves when we are outside. Otherwise, you will bring every hungry creature within a square mile down on us.” He stared at Kimberly the longest, though he did not spare any of them a hard look, his vision lingering upon Derek and Hyun as well. He cleared his throat and some of tension drained from his body. “The reason why we are all here is because we are all something more than we appear at first glance. Did you hear me? Every one of us, so there will be no blame or finger pointing leveled anywhere or against any one person. This shit is beyond our control. None of us have a choice in the matter.”

  He swallowed a breath. “We are members of a group called, the Guardians of the World of Man, or more in simpler terms, the Twelve. We are here because we each carry a Gift within us - a power, a magical quality, whatever the hell you want to call it.

  “Any way you put it, though, the situation is just like Joaquin explained a moment ago. My sister Elena commands light. We’re uncertain how she does it, because only a few of us have been able to figure out how this whole Gift thing works. Most of us haven’t been able to unlock our powers yet. So, I can only guess at how she does it.

  “Thus far, only my sisters, Joaquin and Jason have been able to touch their powers. The rest of us have no clue, not even me, which is ironic, because I actually know of the Gift I carry. Only, I feel like I am a million miles away from being able to help the group in any meaningful way.”

  Elena noticed Joaquin had bowed his head at that. She had no idea why he would react in that manner. Maybe it had something to do with what her brother was saying. She was still puzzling through the thought while Anthony continued.

  “Joaquin has been able to tell us in detail what the other Gifts entail, their name and such. He has been able to express some of their specific qualities. We just don’t know what Gift belongs to whom, and vice versa. Because of that, all this,” Anthony motioned around him, “has been more than a little frustrating. We have so much work to do.” He frowned. “You see, even after finding the three of you, we still have to find the last member of the Twelve. We find him or her before we can even think of doing anything of value. We don’t have the slightest idea where this person may be at the moment, which is aggravating.”

  He fell silent for a few breaths.

  “For the time being, you guys, all we have are each other. No one else is going to help, because they can’t….”

  Another brief silence.

  “Anyway, that’s why you are here, Kimberly. You have something hidden within you, something wonderful. And because of it, you are special – no - you are glorious in the eyes of all humanity. Because of it, you also have a terrible burden to bear.” He swallowed hard. “You have an enemy, Kimberly. It is a horrible, hideous entity that wants only to crush you where you stand, to stomp you into oblivion. It will stop at nothing to see that happen. If you aren’t paying attention or yelling like an idiot angry over something trivial when you should be listening, it will find you. It will stamp you out like a fly on the wall… And, if that were to happen, then we all fail.” His glare intensified. “I’m not just talking about us either.” He was pointing now. “I’m talking about your friends, your family, even the cool friend you were walking with at the mall. If we fail, then everyone else fails as well. The world back home as we knew it, will face certain destruction. In a slow and methodical manner, the conquering and enslavement of our people by this vile enemy of ours will go unchecked. Because all it craves, all it wants more than anything else, is to seize ultimate power. It will do so without mercy, unless we do som
ething about it. Do you understand, Kim? Are you listening?”

  “Y-yes,” she retorted, tears forming under the marshalled concentration in Anthony’s eyes.

  To Elena's surprise, the teen did not break contact. She stared back with purpose, taking his criticism, though it seemed to cut her to the bone.

  “I hope so, Kim. I hope you are for real, because one day it might be my neck on the line and you might be the only one who can save me. I will have to put my trust in you to do the right thing, at exactly the right moment, just like my sister did right here today to save Hyun.

  “Trust without question, execution without delay, results without death. All those qualities encompassing the sort of lives we now have to lead. The eight of us have come to understand this. Now the three of you have to embrace it as well. Because… because… well, because you have to… there is no other choice,” finished Anthony. He looked away and bringing a hand to face, rubbing at his own eyes.

  Sophie went to him at once and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder that he accepted at once. She whispered something in his ear that seemed to make him relax.

  Elena turned to look at Kimberly once again.

  “I am sorry,” she mouthed at Elena and shrugged her shoulders, wiping at her eyes.

  “Hey, Joaquin,” began Anthony, “why don’t I take your place there with Hyun. Let’s have you and Kimberly and Derek kinda go and talk somewhere. You get them up to speed with everything that’s going on. You know, give them all the details. Yeah?”

  Joaquin looked up at her brother with a slight squint, though there was no glare in his eyes.

  Elena knew the larger boy was not used to taking direct orders from anyone, except maybe his coaches. But, he dismissed what he was feeling or was about to utter.

  “Yeah sure, man, no problem, I’ll get them up to speed.” He stood up and beckoned the other two to follow him as he walking off a ways. Almost immediately, the three of them began to talk.

  Elena copied her brother and squatted at Hyun’s side, as did Mikalah and Sophie. Jason and Louis stayed where they were. Andrew hung back with the animals. The Familiars formed a five-pointed perimeter about the rest of the group with adroit proficiency.

  Both Kimberly and Derek make startled noises and gestures when they realized the rest of the Fist had joined them from the forest.

  Joaquin placated their fears at once, pointing out individual animals and giving the other two the details of each. It still took them a few minutes to calm them down. Even then, whenever they looked in the direction of the animals, there was still great deal of anxiety about their faces.

  “I guess I’m lucky you were around when you were,” muttered Hyun through another grimace of pain.

  Elena’s concentration broke.

  She peered down at the teenage girl before her on the snow-covered trail. “I’m not sure how I did it this time. It was a little different than before… stronger maybe. Up to now, I had only practiced with campfires and light bulbs. I didn’t know I could pull the rays of the sun into me and… and smash them together into a bundle so tight I could make lightning.” She blinked, embarrassed. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

  Her brother squirmed closer to the downed girl, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he shuffled.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter how you did it, right? It worked like a charm.” Hyun paused to breathe in and out, in labored gulps. “Still, though, I owe you a great deal of thanks just the same.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the nine-year-old, enthusiastic as she rubbed at her bruised shoulder. She was glad when it appeared the discomfort there was subsiding.

  At her side, her brother repeated what Joaquin had done earlier with his hands, offering them to Hyun. “You ready to try and sit up now?”

  “Yeah, might as well or else I’ll end up freezing to death on this cold-ass trail,” answered Hyun in jest. She grabbed Anthony’s hand and pulled. Her brother supported the Asian girl, pushing against the small of her back to lessen any strain.

  Elena grinned, pleased to see the other girl sit up without yelling out in agony.

  She did frown though, indicative of the pain in her body. Her forehead creased with the effort. Hyun glanced around and then looked at Anthony with searching eyes. “You think you could check my back, see what the damage is?”

  Elena watched her brother glance over at Sophie, a stricken look on his face.

  Sophie wasted no time and walked around to Hyun’s other side. “I’ll help, is that ok?”

  Hyun nodded and put her head in her knees, her arms folding around her head. “Go ahead,” came her muffled voice.

  They both leaned Hyun forward a tiny bit more. When she made no yelp of pain, Sophie hiked up her jacket and cashmere sweater.

  Elena could see she was wearing a white cotton undershirt below. Streaked with a good amount of blood, the wounds seeped in three locations, where the spider-bat’s claws had stabbed. To her relief, it was not drenched. In fact, to the little girl, they appeared to have stopped bleeding altogether.

  Sophie pulled the undershirt upward with care. She un-tucked it from the girl’s jeans and exposed her skin and the waistband of her white cotton underwear.

  Elena almost giggled out loud when she saw her brother blush bright crimson.

  Sophie noticed and smiled too, but it extinguished once she saw the extent of Hyun’s injuries.

  Elena gulped back her aversion at seeing open wounds. Girding her courage, she saw Hyun had three neat punctures in her back. They were about three-quarters of an inch wide and about the same measurement in depth. They had indeed stopped bleeding, and were oozing light amounts of blood. They made small rivulets down her body, soaking into her underwear and jeans.

  “Hey Andrew!” called Anthony, not changing position.

  “Yeah, bro, what’s up?”

  “Dude, go back to the shopping carts and bring back the paper towels and something we can use to bind Hyun’s wounds. We need something we can wrap completely around her torso,” replied Anthony in a raised voice.

  Andrew did not answer back, but shot off into the forest behind them back to where they had left the shopping carts. Their investigation of the noises in the intersection had not required their presence. The bear-bogs had shed them for added mobility.

  “How bad is it?” wondered Hyun after a while, her words stunted, short.

  Anthony looked from the girls’ back to her face, which she kept sideways from him. He could only see half of the uncomfortable cast of her expression. “How bad does it feel?” he replied with a question of his own.

  “Not too bad. It just stings a lot. When I move it feels like a jolt of pain at first, but then it goes away,” described the teenage girl, still gazing at the ground in front of her.

  “Well, then it’s not as bad as if feels. For the most part, the wounds have stopped bleeding, but they’re still kinda oozing. We need to apply pressure on them to make them stop altogether. We’ll do it after we get them cleaned. You know all the ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ crap our parents drummed in our heads, right?” He ended on a light note, hoping she would smile.

  She did not. She just nodded her head a few times, focusing on what lay before her instead.

  Andrew came back, running, holding something that did not look like a roll of paper towels at all. He held it out toward Anthony when he came nearer.

  Anthony was about to get frustrated with his friend when he saw the Red Cross marked plain on the outside of the small container. He realized that someone had been smart enough to pack a First Aid kit. “Oh, man, that’s even better! Thanks Drew!”

  Then to Hyun: “We’re in luck, girl. Someone packed a First Aid kit, so we can bandage you up the right way.”

  “Good,” was all Hyun said.

  Andrew fell back into the position with the members of the Fist.

  Elena wondered if the sight of blood bothered him. He would not glance their way once he settled back in the picket-line.
Figures, she thought and returned her attention back to the people before her. Some people just can’t handle it.

  Anthony looked over Hyun’s back at Sophie and nodded to see if she was ready.

  She nodded back in affirmation.

  Elena watched as her brother opened the metal container with the big Red Cross inscribed upon it. He began rummaging around within it. Within half a minute, he had pulled out three large, square Band-Aids, a few q-tips, some cotton balls and an ace bandage. Another quick search produced a small vial of alcohol and a larger bottle of a generic version of iodine tincture. He unstoppered the vial of alcohol and grabbed a cotton ball and up-ended the vial to pour some of the liquid onto the spongy material. He began to clean Hyun’s back of the blood that had run down it and had stained her clothing below.

  She flinched.

  Anthony drew back with a jerk, fearful he had hurt her even more.

  She just giggled, resigned at her over-reaction. “It’s cold. That’s all. You didn’t hurt me,” she assuaged Anthony’s apprehension.

  Sophie giggled too.

  Anthony bunched his shoulders towards his ears. “Well, I wasn’t sure… better safe than sorry, right?”

  Sophie just smiled back at him and he continued finishing up where he had left off.

  Elena saw her brother hand the ace bandage to Sophie immediately thereafter. He said, “Take this, because once I clean and cover her wounds with the Band-Aids, we’re going to have to wrap it around her body a few times. We can apply pressure to staunch the bleeding. Ok?”

  Sophie nodded she understood, although she looked a little pale in Elena’s eyes.

  Anthony then dipped both sides of three of the q-tips in the alcohol and leaned close to Hyun’s ear. “I have to clean the wounds as much as possible. Since we don’t know if that spider-thing was carrying diseases or if it was dirty or whatever, I have to be thorough. We do know its’ tissue is foreign to us, so even if it was germ-free you could still get an infection. We have to make sure you don’t. So, umm… brace yourself, because it’ll most likely hurt like a bitch.”