The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves

by Richard Heredia

  Anthony deliberately looked away from the fell creature, the clear night sky provided a much better view.

  “It is a pity you will never be given the opportunity to reach your full potential. I would have enjoyed the challenge, after so many years of waiting and preparing for this day. It would have been a magnificent battle indeed.” His sigh was more like a rasping gurgle. He turned from Anthony and called loudly, “Bring the seal! We will celebrate the Ceremony here, now, before the very eyes of the Kring-Hël, this so-called leader of the Guardians of the World of Man. And, we will do this upon the hallowed ground of his beloved grandmother!” The man-wolf was staring at him anew, laughing horribly. “How fitting… don’t you think, boy?” he inquired with a vicious grin, grotesquely curling his snout, a malicious gleam in his piercing eyes.

  The hand gripping Anthony’s hair let go. His captors manhandled him off to the side of the cemented area, while the other Jötun came forward with an iron bound chest about two feet wide and a foot each in length and depth. As it reached Fenris, the Jötun opened the chest with on hand - its huge fingers surprisingly dexterous - while managing to balance its weight with the other. A very satisfied looked crossed its’ face when Fenris reached into box-like case and pulled forth what looked to be a simple star-shaped, Christmas ornament.

  Anthony could see it was clearly wrought of the finest materials, forged with superior craftsmanship.

  It was silver and shone with a metallic sheen in the lights about the back yard. Its’ many surfaces reflected various beams of light, at varying times. It spun slowly, suspended on a near invisible filament the man-wolf creature held between his thumb and forefinger. He held it up for all of them to see, turning slightly this way and that, making certain all in attendance got a glimpse of the ornament.

  “The First Organ,” he announced, his voice resounding about the yard. “The Heart, the Promise and the Origin of Hope, since time before time before time, has always been beyond the reach of the Lord of the Storm. It had been nestled, for millennia, in the great bastion of the Halls of the Light. For countless years, the very idea of sundering the organ seemed impossible, a fantasy for only our most devilish children, a dream to seduce their wickedness, a false morsel to feed their diabolical glee.”

  Anthony could only watch in confusion. He had absolutely no clue what was going on.

  Fenris continued, “For century upon century, we have been planning and scheming to reach this great goal of breaking the First Organ. All the while, we’ve shackled and enslaved all of those, our enemies, who have opposed us upon the World of Storm. We have consolidated our might, our power, to finally forge the vast Isig-Vültriäk, the Great Empire of Storm. This very alliance, this unification of the Six Great Races, has finally managed to subjugate all of what was once Chaos under a single banner. We are finally united behind the will of the Great Niveus!”

  About the yard, the creatures were nodding, leering with murderous lust.

  “We are one now. We have a single focus and conviction! For the first time, the World of Storm is one against the other universes!”

  All about, the creatures erupted in ghoulish howls and screeches and gurgling ululations, throwing gloved fists and paws in the night air.

  The man-wolf waited for the din to die down, glancing about satisfied. “But, everything being equal, all of our recent success still does not change one remaining aspect of our struggle. The First Organ remains ever secure within its’ Womb of Light - protected, guarded, and, will most likely remain as such, until the very end of time.”

  All around Anthony there were savage mutterings throughout the yard at this declaration. He began to wonder what Fenris was holding in his gauntleted hand. For some reason, a bad feeling began to take root in his chest.

  “This is true, my brothers. This is an inescapable fact.” He paused dramatically. “And yet, I am honored to say… it matters not.” Only the sound of the mild breeze could be heard. “For The First Organ has been made obsolete and worthless by the very existence of this Key!” He gestured toward the ornament, pausing to look around, watching the meaning of his words sink into the minds of his troops. “This very Key, forged in the heart of the Storm’s Lair by the Great Maelstrom himself, will circumvent the First Organ and change the order of the universes as we know them! For all of us here tonight, this Key spells the end to all of the endless days of mindless torture and mayhem. Delights we have endured and inflicted in the World of Storm to the point of complete and utter boredom. The time has come for the Storm to conquer once more, to expand beyond the borders of our plane, to enlarge our living space and thrive.” He suddenly held the ornament high above his head, thrust eight feet up into the cold night sky. “This is what the Key will bring us!”

  There were satisfied grunts abound.

  “Now, we will drink the fruits of what is rightfully ours! We will take hold of the claim our Great Lord decreed when he first laid eyes upon this World back in the annuls of time when it belonged to the Great Serpents!”

  Around the yard, Anthony heard some muted snarls and growls of accent. Whatever the man-wolf was talking about, all of his troops were of the same mind. Behind it all, continuous, drawn-out, he could hear his grandmother calling for them. Where is she? he thought.

  “This is our right, this is our destiny. We must take it all, before the opportunity escapes us and we are left with nothing. The riches of all the planes belong to us! We need space, we crave more. We must have it all! And, we will, I say. Whether by surrender or by FORCE, with the change this Key will bring, we will rule EVERYWHERE!” His jerked a clenched fist above his head, holding high the dainty, silver ornament.

  The beasts screamed with glorious rage into the starry heavens as loud as they could manage.

  So did his grandmother, urgent, pleading. Why hadn’t she come out of the house to investigate? If she’d had heard the clamor of these hideous creatures, why was she still in the house, clamoring for them? Why didn’t she come?

  Suddenly, he realized something else. Where had the dogs gone? Shouldn’t they be barking like crazy right about now?

  Fenris broke his train of thought. “With the power vetted upon me by my blood, as the Crown Prince of the Vülfen Kur Ambalaj and by the Great Lord of the Storm, the True Nixeous, the One Metohkangmi, the Ancient Nihhûs, I, Fenris dok Kór, the Storm Lord’s Hand, summon the Rending with the final three peals of Hope for this world. As tolls the final chimes, I remove the Guardians of Man. I clear the Way for the Armies of Storm!

  “LET THE MELDING BEGIN!!!”

  Without warning, he swung downward with all of his might, smashing the ornament on the ground with such force, it shattered into pieces so small they resembled dust more than tiny shards of thin, silver glass.

  For a moment or two, nothing happened.

  Anthony watched the fine remnants of the ornament slowly float toward the ground, then looked around quickly, trying desperately to clear the tears from his eyes.

  God, please make my sisters be alright!

  In the last moment, he felt his heart thud in his chest, watched as the final motes of broken glass came to rest upon the concrete patio. As if to answer the beating of the muscle buried deep in his torso, there came a sound. A thrum so low in frequency, he felt it inside his mind and outside his body. While, at the same time, he felt the very ground beneath his feet vibrate with the same resonance. Anthony’s jaw dropped in awe when he saw it was so much more than sound. I was an emittance of light as well. As this tremendous reverberating toll sounded, a sickly green corona of light burst from all the other lights in the backyard, from every star in the night sky and even from the moon.

  All around the backyard, the minions of Fenris ginned and watched in child-like amazement, milling about in wonderment, while the terrible man-wolf smirked at Anthony with distain.

  The sixteen-year-old boy froze with shock, for - as if blown away like a mist before a steady breeze - his grandmother’s house blew out of e
xistence and was simply no longer there. His grandmother’s horrific screams vanished with it, lost on a ghostly wind of decay.

  He glanced frantically about, so unnerved, his stomach twisted in a knot and acidic bile rose in his throat, making his eyes water and his nose run. A moment later, he witnessed almost a third of the homes and a good portion of the streets of the neighborhood surrounding his grandmother’s house dissipate into nothing right before his mortified eyes. Something was destroying the city. Something was devastating Los Angeles.

  Then, the forlorn sound thrummed again… the earth itself groaned in pain…

  …And once again, it resonated everywhere at once, through his mind, body and soul, shimmering off every source of light. Once again, more of the city of Los Angeles and the tiny portion of the only world Anthony had ever known, dissolved into nothing.

  The wrongness of it all registered within every cell of his body. This time he couldn’t hold it back. He retched, his throat clenching and unclenching. He threw-up the entire contents of his stomach. His ears popped with the strain, unable to control it.

  Powerless before the strength of his captors, defenseless against the nausea roiling within, outraged at what was happening to everything he loved. He hung limp in their grasp and cried as retch after retch spewed what was left in his stomach onto the ground.

  Then the sound came again, the third time. It was simply too much for the boy. He passed out cold in the grip of the Swûreg warriors holding him. He slowly slipped into unconsciousness.

  The last thing heard as fell into nothingness was the slurping laugh of the Storm Lord’s Hand.

  He was rent from his rightful place – from his world. His very existence was torn from the Earth. In a blink of an eye, the final pieces fell into place and the planes of existence moved, shifted, and altered.

  The Rending finished…

  …and became the Melding.

  Anthony Herrera was no longer in his grandmother’s backyard, but somewhere else. So infinitely far away it couldn’t be calculated, possibly… even dreamed.

  ~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼ }>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

  ~ 32 ~

  Abducted

  Wednesday, November 24th, the Day Before Thanksgiving,

  A Few Minutes Earlier…

  Andrew Ibarra lounged on the couch, watching TV, one of his legs strewn over the back of the worn piece of furniture, the other resting on a pile of pillows. He was dressed in a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and his Nikes. His hair was slightly off kilter from lying down for an extended period. Remote in hand, his finger flicked the control every third second or so as he surfed through the hundreds of cable channels available to him.

  Something of import flashed across his mind and he remembered he was supposed to clean up the front room. A task he was given, by his father, over an hour ago! He sat up quickly, placed the remote on the coffee table in front of him, glancing around the room. He noticed for the third or fourth time the messed up couch covers and pillows, the disheveled magazines, yesterday’s newspaper strewn on the love seat in the corner, nearly covering the entire piece of furniture. His eyes fell to the empty bag of potato chips on the floor between the TV and the table before him. He stared at the crumbs trailing from the bag.

  Should I get up and clean this pigsty?

  It probably mattered little if he did or didn’t do what his father told him. He would probably yell at him either way. Lately, it seemed nothing he did was up to his father’s standard. So, why waste the effort, right?

  It wasn’t as though he father was mean or abusive. The situation at the Ibarra residence was nothing like that. Rather, his father was stressed, about a great many things. It was to the point that lately, all he seemed to do around the house was yell. There were no calm discussion anymore, no level-toned admonitions. Those days were long gone. He was dissatisfied with everything, including Andrew, his brothers and his sister. But, it seemed to the teenager, his father took out his frustration on him the most.

  His siblings all handled their fathers’ change in demeanor differently, each in their own way. Andrew wanted to do the best he could. He wanted to prove to his father that being the oldest he could handle the responsibility of helping out around the house, assist with the younger kids. Which, he believed should also earn him more freedom. But, his father was just too critical of everything he tried, whether it was some chore or wiping his little sister’s face. It was beginning to bother him on a deeper level than he realized.

  Is that really the issue though? Come on, Drew, you gonna start making excuses and land yourself on Oprah now?

  Maybe not…

  This was, after all, not some type of rebellion against his father. His father wasn’t even the cause of his distraction of late. Since he’d come back home on that rainy night, he’d found it hard to concentrate. Those memories made it difficult for him to remember what he’d promised to do. It had nothing to do with dissatisfaction. He was just making excuses, trying to avoid the real issue at hand. The creepy kid and her monster wolf - those were the real cause to his disjointed malaise.

  For the past two days, all he could think of was the Isighünd – Jätung. He could see it as clear as if it stood right there in the front room. He could make out every detail of the massive wolf-like pet belonging to that creepy bleached-blonde, that midget version of Dakota Fanning on crack, named Nixy. He couldn’t get his mind around the sheer size of the beast or its incredibly huge fangs or its gruesome gaze, so filled with hunger and hate. He imagined when it ripped flesh it would probably howl in pure ecstasy, savoring every blood-sluiced chunk of meat squishing down its throat.

  Dude, yuck!

  How could something like that exist here in Los Angeles in this day and age? The god damned thing was from another time, another place, right? It has no business being here. And how in the hell could roam around my neighborhood and shit, and go completely unnoticed?

  How long had the creature been here? How long would it stay?

  And where the hell were the cops? Crap, weren’t they supposed to be patrolling the streets and keeping everything safe and shit? A thousand bucks says they’re out there, somewhere, eating donuts without a care in the world, like some fat kid in a candy store!

  He stood up and made his way toward the empty bag of chips and began picking up the crumbs that had fallen out of it, carefully placing them back in the bag. Absently, he wondered if he would ever walk farther up Milbur Street than where his house stood. He seriously questioned if he’d even go up half way to visit Anthony.

  Would the creature be there waiting for me? Would it want to get at my brothers and my baby sister?

  “So you have chosen to include him this early into the game, eh, Anthony Herrera, when he was not supposed to be a part of it at this juncture… Well, I guess in the grander scheme of things, it matters little.”

  Naw, hell naw, Ant, you are on your own!

  The words haunted him. As the days passed and the weather grew ever colder, everyone else in the world continued on, as if nothing was amiss. I mean, sure, what’s out of the ordinary when I nearly died at the jaws of a five-hundred pound wolf-beast? Nothing? Kiss my fucken ass!

  He could still see her in that outlandishly giant doghouse, glaring at him as if he were nothing to her, below her notice, not fit to be anywhere other than under one of her patent leather shoes. She’d made him feel insignificant with the white frozenness of her eyes.

  What did she mean by “in the game” anyway? Why did he have to be in any game? Why did he have to be included when all he’d done was help a friend? A friend he hadn’t seen nor spoken to in seven years, mind you. Couldn’t she just forget I was there at all, especially when she looked at me like a piece of walking crap.

  The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. It was a tangle of conspiring events well beyond his comprehension. He could feel something was about to happen, something different than anyone could imagine or quite possibly believe.
Yet, he had no clue, not an inkling of what it might be exactly. Still, the feeling didn’t shake free, something was going to happen. Call it was a sense of dread that began to grow, put pressure on his shoulders, and tighten the muscles on his neck the moment he’d seen Jätung. It had worsened with every hour since. He wished he had never seen what he had at top of the hill on Milbur Drive.

  Thank god his brothers and his sisters were away, visiting his aunt.

  He folded the potato chip bag in half, sealing the broken morsels inside. Next, he set it atop the pile of newspapers and he began to gather them into a more manageable pile. One capable of fitting into the trashcan in the kitchen. When he returned from that, he had brought with him a damp paper towel and began to wipe the coffee table, cleaning the various spills and smudges it had accumulated. He placed six or so magazines neatly on top of it, spread them out, fan-like from the middle.

  He turned his head when he heard the jiggling of keys outside, his gaze coming to settle on the front door, fairly sure it was his father, returning from the market. He smiled at himself, thinking it was a good thing he’d finally got up off his ass and did what he’d been told to do, especially now his father had returned from the market with their dinner. He didn’t stop what he was doing as his father unlocked the dead bolt and door handle locks, and entered the house.

  “Hey, Dad,” he began as he finished straightening and tucking in the last couch cover, and stood. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Huh?” the older man stammered obviously in deep thought. “Oh, I got us one of those pinche rotisserie chickens they have sitting under those hot lamps down at Super-A.”

  “I like those, they’re good,” responded the boy, picking up the remote from the armrest of one of the couches, turning off the TV. He no longer had any intention of watching it. He looked over his father for a moment.