The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (80 page)

With the delicacy of a
ballerina, Inghëldir
avü di Vallüm
made her way up one of the trails to the body of
a Swüreg that appeared to have been punched from behind through the
entire thickness of its’ chest. The entire middle portion of its
torso was missing, great rents of flesh marring the upper portions
of the delightfully gruesome wound. She stopped to kneel down next
to the body. It was frozen solid having been in the elements
overnight. She put her diminutive head into the wound itself,
inspecting it from a much closer vantage. The wound was large. She
was able to turn her head to either side without touching any of
the edges. She inhaled deeply, looking left and then swiveled her
head right. Immediately, the scent hit her like a ton of bricks –
feline, a cat of some particular size, its’ species unknown to her,
probably unknown to all living upon any of the planes of existence.
This great cat was special. It was one of the Allies of the Twelve,
Fenris had warned about. She was certain of it.

Once more, she took in the
smell, categorizing it, retaining it should she need it at later
time. Unable to resist, she opened her mouth and let her tongue
snake to its full length, rejoicing at finally being able to
stretch the muscle-like appendage. Having been amongst humans for
so long, she had not dared let her eight-inch tongue fully extend.
She knew full well the sight of it lolling almost down to her chest
would’ve sent any human into a frenzy. That sort of attention, her
master would’ve frowned upon for certain… at the time.

But, that was then and
this was now. No longer was she within the World of Man. She was in
a new construct, a new plane that had not existed before. The
Melded Plane, a forging of the Great Lord of the Storm himself. She
was in his construct and could, therefore, be a little more of
herself.

Her long, sinuous tongue
poked out slowly, then began to stroke at the edge of the wound,
absorbing some of the frozen blood, its’ searing surface melting
the gooey liquid almost immediately. Seconds thereafter, new
sensations rippled through her body. She shivered with ecstasy at
the taste of such wonderfully agonized flesh, parts of her body
stiffening, other more intimate parts moistening, titillations she
was used to experiencing. They were the things she felt almost
every time she ate meat of this abused manufacture.

After having existed for
more than half a millennia by her reckoning, Inghëldir was ancient,
though she might like look and sound very much like a little girl.
She wasn’t, not by far, and these waves of pleasure were precisely
the type of feeling she welcomed most, because they were hers. They
weren’t forced upon her as they had been countless times with her
insatiable master. This was lust from within – a real manifestation
of her making.
Not his!
Oh, how she wished making love was more like this
and not like what her deprived lord vetted upon her person time and
time again.

Without a second thought,
she opened her jaws wide. Where they came together at the back of
her mouth, they unhinged, gaping even wider, allowing for an even
greater amount of meat to be consumed. Despite the fact the body of
the Swüreg was frozen solid, she had no problem biting through a
great hunk of meat and bone. She closed her eyes against the
breaking point of ecstasy raging inside of her. It made her wet. It
made her drip. She moaned deep inside her throat as she chewed
noisily, crushing the warrior’s bones, masticating the tender,
tortured meat of his chest. She swallowed the entire lot in one
gulp, her neck bulging from the sheer volume of flesh massaging its
way toward her stomach. At once, her headache deadened. Her mind
became sharper, clear of the detritus of instability and
narcissistic rage. She turned her head in the opposite direction
and took another massive bite of the frozen Swüreg, quivering with
pleasure.

From above, Jätung
growled, a deep warning rumbled from the very center of his
barrel.

Still within the chest
cavity of the dead warrior, Inghëldir sent Jätung a silent
message.
“Speak, my Petling, what is
it?”

In a flash, an image of a
man suddenly materialized in her mind, medium sized, at a distance
- all true detail was fuzzy and indistinct.

She stood at
once.

A man!?!

There was not supposed to
be
any
man upon
the Melded World older than seventeen years of age!

What in the name of the
Lord of the -
, her thoughts stopped
halfway incomplete, as a memory of the night before flooded up to
the surface of her mind.

There
was
a man in the Melded World, a man
that was not supposed to be here. He shouldn’t have been capable of
transmuting, but he had. He’d somehow circumvented the strict
edicts set in place by the Lord of the Storm upon creation of this
plane. She had seen him the night before. His very presence had
foiled her initial plans of taking the Ibarra boy directly to the
rendezvous with Fenris, as had been designated prior to the onset
of the Rending. It was his presence that had forced her to alter
those plans. She’d had to make snap decisions then. They’d been
changes Fenris hadn’t been overly pleased about. If it hadn’t been
for her master, stepping in as he had, explaining her quandary, she
might have very well died yesterday morning instead of given her
current mission.

She quickly, but
noiselessly, trotted to the highest point upon the largest of the
three trails, and looked down the slope on the other side of the
ridge. The sight before her surprised her so deeply, she nearly
called out, though not in fear, but at the sheer audacity of the
man further down the trail no more than twenty cable-lengths away.
He stood in plain view, not even bothering to hide. His clothes
were tattered and shredded as if he had survived some sort of
blast. His hair was askew. His face and neck streaked with grime.
He looked middle-aged for a human with a slight bow in his legs and
a potbelly, most likely from drinking too much spirits. She smirked
knowingly. He was yet another drunkard among many. Why did so many
humans drink themselves to oblivion when there was so much more to
experience – flesh, blood, bones, sinew…? Her eyes turned cold with
distain as they flittered over his salt and pepper hair, skin much
darker than that of his tall son.

He returned her stare
without flinching. Even when her tongue flicked out of her mouth,
impossibly long and overly dexterous for one to belong to any sort
of human, he showed no response. She began to lick off the gore and
frozen blood from her face and neck, careful not to ruin the
perfect white of her dress. Still, nothing, he hadn’t moved a
muscle.

She was suddenly even
angrier. Her blatant act of intimidation did not affect him in the
least.

He just reached out his
right arm, his hand extending outward from it, his middle finger
pointing up at the sky.

“
You will never have my
son, you pinché puta! He and his amigos are far from here,
protected and safe from the likes of you and your stinkin’ pero
from Hell!”

She felt her anger turn to
fury, knowing this was a gesture of extreme rudeness in the World
of Man.

“
Jätung,
come! You will dine upon the flesh of his insignificant man
tonight!”
she ordered silently, though in
her mind she had shouted intensely, red-hot anger roiling
within.

The great Isighünd did not
hesitate. He was a flurry of movement. The hulking beast bounded
down from higher recessed of the hill toward her
position.

Simultaneously, the man
turned and ran down the trail with an ambling, if not ponderous
gait, making him look more like a newborn duckling than a grown
man.

Inghëldir found herself
shaking her head back and forth unconsciously, disbelieving.
What was this imbecile thinking?
she thought incredulously.
Jätung would run him down in a matter of seconds.

The huge Isighünd came to
her side. As deftly as a mouse, she scampered onto its wide back.
In less than a second, they were streaking down the trail, uncaring
of the noise they made. Their prey had been chosen.
They would dine to the fullest this morning. She
would rip this insolent man limb from limb and eat his flaccid cock
first!

When they rounded the only
bend in the trail, coming down the hill at a blistering pace,
Inghëldir was astonished to see the man wasn’t mere feet from them,
as he should’ve been. No! He was well over thirty cable-lengths
ahead now!

Her face wrinkled with
shock, anger and determination, together. She ordered even more
speed from the Jätung, and was pleased to see they were gaining
much ground on the man.
You will dead in
seconds! Jätung enjoys eating live -.

She would have continued
the thought, but her expression changing from a mask of murderous
intent to gaping bewilderment as the man, who had been no more than
twenty feet ahead of them, seemed to shimmer…

…
Then blur…

…
Then disappeared
altogether…

…
Only to reappear, a split
second later, four or five times further away than he’d been
moments before!

She was so unnerved, she
nearly lost her grip on the hackles of her pet. She nearly crashed
to the ground, before she regained her composure and her hold upon
the beast. Giving a quick look at the land speeding past, she knew
it would’ve hurt if she had fallen. Even a creature as strong and
resilient as she was, the velocity she had coaxed from Jätung was
great enough, she could’ve been injured, quite badly.

Between her legs, she felt
Jätung shift into an even faster gear. She looked up to see them
once more closing upon the man at an incredible rate. The Isighünd
began to pant as he plowed his way through the snow with
unrelenting ferocity.

A few seconds later, the
Nixy and her familiar were upon the man once again.

This time, Jätung was only
a head-length away from crushing the man in his jaws when the man
shimmered once more, blurred, and popped out of existence for a
fraction of a second. Again, he reappeared farther down the trail -
which had now become wide enough for wagons - some fifty feet away.
His bent, misshapen legs making him run with a ridiculous
teeter-tottering gait. He was so slow! He should’ve been already
torn asunder by the likes of Jätung’s fangs. Yet, by the curse of
this unsightly Vyche her pet could not catch him.

Wait, Vyche?
Why had she come to that conclusion? The question
confused her, stopped her from yelling in frustration.

The Isighünd did that for
her, sensing his master’s bewilderment. He wasn’t used to use
thoughts and notions. It made him roar with fury.

Vyche… was it really magic
she’d felt within the man?
The concept
alone was ridiculous. Mankind had been stripped of all sorcerous
potency thousands of years in the past. How could this be so? And
yet, she couldn’t deny what she’d felt. Her proximity to the man
when he’d vanished, had given her a clue – he was somehow a
sorcerer of immense power, a wielder of the mysterious Vyche -
maybe even as great as Fenris himself!

For the first time in her
six and a half centuries, she was scared. Something unexpected,
unique and extremely dangerous had been unleashed upon a plane of
existence that had never been seen before.

This wasn’t supposed to
happen upon the Melded World.

A new task now before her,
she forged on. She
had
to know what this creature in front of her was. This was no
longer merely a human being.

Who was the spindly
legged, fat man capable of phasing from one point to another in the
blink of an eye?

Things within the
Construct weren’t as they should’ve been. Something was terribly
wrong.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Explanation

Day Two, Friday, 7:26
am…

Joaquin sat by the blazing
fire, waiting. All about him, his companions bustled about the
cave. They scurried here and there, completing the last tasks of
the morning – wiping dishes, cleaning, grooming and straightening
up. On and on they went.