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

by Richard M. Heredia

  He and I have agreed to these terms and they are henceforth unbreakable. You will do as I command without question. Do not cross me on this, my son, for it is crucial to our plans for the future.

  So, I am explaining for a second time, should you fail to recapture the Twelve by his arrival, then you are to place your trust in me. Be amicable to Ghregûr and his grey-skinned cronies for the time being. I assure you, it will be well worth a few rents to your pride. Soon you will realize what we will become and how high we will stand within the Six-Fold Empire when all this is over.

  Last, and on a more filial subject, the eldest daughter of your first wife has come into estrous – her first - and is ripe for mating. I am sending her to you for proper inspection per the Code of the Mare Consiliu. I do this in spite of the excess power it will take to bring her onto the Melded World.

  We Vülfen are bound to the Code, so I will ignore the effort needed and send her at once. Expect her with my next messenger, my son, and enjoy the bounty of her fruit, you have earned it. Or will have, in the very near future.

  In the Might and in the Strength of the Vülfen Kur, I salute you,

  The Rigă-Kur of the Ambalaj, Protector of the Realm, Mouth of the Storm, the Keeper of the Seals and Your Proud Father,

  Claudiu dok Kór

  Claudiu dok Kór, Eleventh of That Name.

  Post Script: Additionally, it has come to my attention that the Seeker herself has returned from her foray into the World of Man. Her mission was a success. What she has planted has taken root and flowers, even as I write this missive. The roundup of the Lesser Twelve’s has commenced. Yet, that is not why I write of her now, Fenris.

  Apparently, she did not come back to Storm as was first outlined at the Great Assemblage.

  Rumored has it, she has traveled to the Melded World instead. For what purpose, I have yet to divine and because of it, I am completely disadvantaged. I do not know whose play this may be. It may be a parallel ploy set into motion by the Great Maelstrom himself.

  In that light, be wary and keep your ears pointed high. Should you catch wind of her, however insignificant it may seem to you, get word to me at once.

  CdK.

  Fenris had finished the letter and could not help but smile. Despite all the hardship and unforeseen difficulties he had faced, despite all his frustration and anger, Storm was on the move. Soon the Melded World would be under heel. Millions of Storm’s inhabitants were coming. Nothing could stand against a flood such as that, not even the precious Master Twelve.

  Even with the emergence of a Fist of Light, the unorthodox behavior of Inghëldir and the discovery of this mysterious Paradoxical Being, all else in the monumentous plan set in play by the glorious Lord of the Storm was going perfect.

  His father and the vast army of the Vülfen nation had mobilized so they would retrieve Ivinfrüst. It was the most ancient of swords, called the Primary Blade and forged by the Great Maelstrom himself. It had been a long time ago, during the First War of the Light and the Storm, at the dawn of creation itself, when the three universes and all living beings that lived upon them were young.

  It had not been an effective tool back then, but it would prove to be more than enough this time around. It would not be the harbinger of the defeat of the mighty Lord of the Light and his powerful Nöhreg. This was a song sung ages in the past.

  Now, it had a much lesser role in this game. Still, it would prove a powerful instrument indeed.

  Ivinfrüst would be used against a Ring of Twelve, two and ten helpless babes. It would spill their lifeblood into the giant caldron before the Throne of Jüle. Wherein, their blood would collect and pool for the final incantation. This, the second greatest of all spells unleashed in history.

  The spell used to create the Melded World would forever go unmatched, had mused the Hand with a crooked twist of his lips. He exposed his long canines.

  It was a complicated incantation that required many steps - in sequence and executed to perfection - in order for it to work.

  When the caldron filled with every last drop of blood from the veins of the Twelve, then the Forgers, having finished their mystical works, would next bring forth the Heart of the Storm. This was a wondrous sphere, wrought of the wondrous crystals transmuted from the World of Man and placed deep into the earth of the Melded World. It would then be placed in the midst of the blood-filled caldron.

  Next, the Six Kings of Storm - one for each of the branches of the Six-Fold Empire - would lay their hands upon the Heart. They would utter but a single word. Kynsha-Nä. With that short utterance, they would let loose the spell that would open a permanent portal to the World of Man. With it, they would bring a war unlike any other to that plane of logic, science and technology. It would mark, the beginning of the end of mankind. It would herald the rise of Storm above all else, tipping the balance in their favor - forever.

  The Legions of Storm, emboldened and reinforced by the gruesome technologies of Man would be more than capable to contend with their true foes. For the first time ever, their legions would find themselves armed with the combined power of Vyche and the catastrophic efficiency of human weapons. They would be strong enough to wipe out any foe. They would be ready to enter into the final conflict – the Last War of the Light and the Storm.

  That was where the fate of the cosmos would be decided once and for all.

  He, the Hand, had sat there for a time, smiling to himself, wicked, quite pleased by the comforting words of his father.

  Time had passed and still he had not stirred.

  Until…

  He sat up, on the edge of his chair as another train thought surfaced and made him tweak with agitation.

  The Seeker?

  What sort of business could she have here on the Melded World so early in the game? There was no intrigue or misdirection to be had here. Why would the Lord of the Storm bother to put someone as lethal and stalwart as her in all this? It was like cutting an insect in twain with a sword, a ridiculous use of force.

  He stood. He made his way around the desk and walked slowly toward the blazing hearth. He pulled his cape about him, hoping to get any tiny bit of warmth he could sustain about his person.

  Rasputna - the Seeker, the Mistress of Chaos, the harvester of deaths, killer of more living things than any other creature in the four universes. She was the Snowman’s Dagger, the Knife in the Dark, forever walking in shadow, unseen, unheard, until it was too late. She would strike with her infamous Stiletto of Piercing and death would soon follow. She was said to be once human, a long time ago, having walked the earth amongst the first generations of that low race.

  This the Hand doubted with all his being.

  She was far too deadly, way too evil to have come from the womb of a human mother. She was without pity or conscience or remorse. She was a mere vessel. She did as commanded by the Lord of the Storm without question, devoid of thought. She was action minus reaction, a bringer of murder, a forerunner of woe. No human could have ever dreamed to reach her level of soullessness. Her detachment was absolute. No human had ever walked or thought or lived in absolutes. He knew, because he had observed them for hundreds and hundreds of years.

  He knew.

  Rasputna was something else altogether.

  Still, though, why here? Why now? Who else was throwing in the chits on this gambit of all gambits?

  He paced before the fire, his hands clasped behind his back. Who else had the power behind them to motivate the Seeker into action? He could only think of two others. Two who were currently not directly involved with the invasion of the Melded World. Two who might have been able to persuade Rasputna to break with the orders of the Assemblage.

  Even if that were true, they would still have to issue those edicts in such a way they would appear to the Seeker to have come from the Great Maelstrom himself. Otherwise, she would not have budged.

  That could only mean Asmodemus, the Vicar of the Storm, had a hand in it. Or the Grän Herra herself, the a
bominable Rakel Angantýr. She was the High Lady of Skrímsli, whose fate was tied to the Melded World far more than any of the rest of them.

  If it were indeed Asmodemus, then it would mean the Oration of Storm wanted a say in what happened here. That could get tiresome in a second. Having a slew of his religious fanatics running amok, causing havoc and dissention wherever they went, would be a nightmare. Fenris could see that Asmodemus, being the Sanctus Magnus, would want to spread the Word of Storm to each universe they overtook. He would do this to ensure his true worth alongside Metohkangmi.

  Still, it seemed a bit farfetched to the Hand that he would go so far to try and fool the Seeker into action, knowing what a high risk it to be. If she should find out who was manipulating her and exacted her revenge, the product of such deception would be horrific.

  Rasputna would have no mercy.

  Rakel Angantýr, though, might have discovered the truth of her future. She might have acted out of desperation to save herself and her people from permanent exile on the Melded World.

  Of course, this exile had been planned in secret by more than one faction within the Six-Fold Empire many years agone. There had been more than enough time for her to unearth the plot.

  Yet, where would she have siphoned enough power or leverage to pull off something such as this over the eyes of the Seeker herself? That was not the Skrímsli way. They were all brute and brawn with little mind power amongst them. How could she and her hapless minions have succeeded where many in the past had failed miserably? The Seeker was a genius of death and not some mere plaything like a Tünn or a Hël-Hünd or even a Nixy for that matter!

  “There is no possible way, Rakel - the whore - could have tricked the Seeker,” said Fenris aloud to the walls about him. “She does not have the talent or the gumption to risk the wrath of Rasputna.”

  Besides, it did not refute the fact that the Seeker was, at this minute, unleashed somewhere upon the Melded World. She could cause a great deal of harm to all the plans Fenris had laid out with his father and his uncle. There were plans ensuring the advancement of the Vülfen Kur Ambalaj. If she found out what they all had been planning in secret, it could well be the death of them all.

  Damn! Father said it best… I will need to keep my ears pointed high… high indeed if I am to hope to catch wind of the silent and the unseen!

  Rasputna, of all the dwellers of Storm, was one person Fenris had hoped too never cross paths unless it was necessary.

  Now, she was here, in his proverbial backyard. While he dawdled about warm and cozy in his keep, waiting for the fucking snow to stop falling, she was on the move, working toward some invisible end.

  Maybe, it was time to switch to his alternate plan. If he indeed had no choice and time was running out… maybe his father and his uncle served up cold might be enough to gain him what he desired more than anything – power.

  His secondary option was looking ever better with each passing minute.

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  ~ Interlude ~

  The Great Meldings

  Day Five, Monday, 4:17 pm…

  Looking down, from the vast coldness of space, upon the fledgling world forged from two others revealed naught but sheer madness. It was an infant planet when compared to the agelessness of the multiverse. But it was turbulent, unbalanced, in the midst of a titanic struggle. From this vantage, the entire surface of the Melded World was obscured. The new-made world remained hidden beneath in layer upon layer of roiling Corliss winds. They drove massive hurricane-like formations in wide swaths. These gigantic clouds curved across entire continents. They left wide bands of destruction in their wake.

  Every so often, these great sheets of white and gray and black would part, scatter. In those moments, monumentous stretches of snow and ice unveiled. They would reach far into the tropics, killing the jungles. They froze everything under the thick drifts and merciless grasping chill they left behind. Those moments would be brief, though. The never-ending rush of the clouds would return – sometimes in hours, sometimes in mere minutes. Another great storm would once more cover all and for hours would show no signs it would ever relent. These storms dominated entire hemispheres, wracked the length of mountain ranges. They would blast thousands of miles of grasslands, planes and deserts alike. They would shroud league upon league of woodlands and forests. They buried them beneath blankets of snow and layers of ice so fast things upon the landscape became buried - often before they could find shelter.

  The vista itself was evidence this false planet was at war, the climate itself fought. And yet, the weather alone was not the only thing happening on a planetary scale. Nowhere was more evident than in what should have been the trackless South Pacific. But, over the course of the past day and a half, it had changed into something else altogether.

  Atop what was once Mount Kilauea, on the big island of Hawaii, it shimmered into existence. It appeared off the horizon to the south.

  Atop one of the highest points of the Galapagos Islands, into the gloom of the west, it glowed. Then, it coalesced into being at the edge of visibility, just before the curve of the Melded World would have hidden it from view.

  From within the waters off New Zealand, the currents began to change. The ocean swelled, a gentle push toward the west. In the east, a towering cliff, running north to south, as far as the eye could see in either direction, appeared. It loomed mere miles from this location - a cliff that had not been there before, a cliff standing well over a thousand feet tall. This was an escarpment with rock of an unusual color. It appeared like that of dried bone, brittle, as if it would fall apart at any moment. It was as though the rock had been freeze dried for thousands of years.

  Along the northern end of Siple Island off the coast of what should have been Antarctica, came a flashing brilliance. A second later, the ground shook with violence as if some mighty fault line had ruptured the seafloor for hundreds of leagues. An instant later, came a horrendous roar as alien stone erupted forth of a sudden. It was the same ancient rock seen thousands of miles to the north and west. It was impossible to tell if the rock had come up from the ground or had fallen from the sky, for it had done neither.

  In reality, it had come into the Melded World just as had the Twelve and the Fist, Fenris and the Host.

  And, it had not come from Earth.

  It had come from another place, a desolate, frozen realm long banished from the worlds of Light and Man. It had – in volume - replaced this entire part of the vast Pacific Ocean exactly. Each cubic foot of water switched with an identical cubic foot of stone and dirt.

  It was a misshapen oval, touching each of those four points, roughly drawn, outlining a gargantuan mass of land.

  It was a new continent, born of the Storm, now forever in the Melded World.

  It was Richuese, the ancestral home of the Skrímsli…

  …And it had been stricken with banishment, along with all its inhabitants.

  *****

  She stood in the shadows of his highly appointed and private chamber, provided to him by his great, great, great nephew. It was spacious, despite the meager size of the keep itself. Dominated by a large canopied bed, it housed the many, many accoutrements required of the greatest Prēost of Storm.

  She had watched him as he used one of Nixy’s. She had been gazing upon them, unnoticed, as he undressed her. He had tied her up in the most uncomfortable position. Then he proceeded to indulge himself in a long, unending session. Until - what seemed like hours later - he had finally collapsed atop her exhausted and spent.

  By then, the Nixy was bruised and bloodied from his harsh attention. She lay motionless atop the mattress of the bed, breathing shallow, a hair’s breath away from death itself.

  The Mheto-Prēost twitched and spasmed, and giggled with glee. He had enjoyed himself to the fullest, content for a time to keep his naked and grotesque body on top of the poor, child-like creature. All the while, he whispered vile things into one of the Nixy’s ears.

>   Through it all, the watcher had remained motionless and silent. She had slowed her breathing, taking a breath only four times a minute. She had urged her heart to slow, made the blood in her veins crawl, consume less oxygen, less energy. Still, her eyes missed nothing.

  Finally, Malik-Käi of the age old House Kór of the Vülfen raised himself from the Nixy, wiping his genitals on her thigh with a leer. In quite tones, he promised he would return after he had is evening meal with even more delights.

  She listened, knowing she should have felt repulsed as he detailed those plans.

  But alas, she was not.

  Never squeamish or revolted in the slightest way, she endured the time it took for him to explain every detail. Yet, she was only half-listening to the content of his words. After a while, she wondered if he would ever shut up and rolled her eyes, bored.

  She had done many of the same things he had conveyed to the Nixy. In truth, she had done so more times than even the twisted little Prēost could have dreamed. She had even asked her lovers to inflict similar torture upon her upon occasion.

  Thus, she could better understand the pain and the suffering that went along with such acts.

  In the end, she never felt any of it, not in an actual sense. She was shut off in that manner. She did not comprehend the relevance or reality of agony, or any other feeling for that matter.

  I am immune.

  After what seemed like another hour, the ridiculous man-wolf finished. But by then, his torn and battered Nixy had fallen into a comatose slumber. Many of her orifices still oozed, coagulating blood. Other fluids spewed and splattered upon the bedcovers.

  He turned to make for the door and the antechamber beyond.