Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (27 page)

She raised herself the
rest of the way to her feet and made after her brother. Her eyes
focused on the sight of the nearest smoldering chunk of meat,
blackened and twisted. She shied away from the smell, covering her
nose with her hand. She rubbed at her aching shoulder with the
other and walked the last few steps toward their wounded
friend.

“
Did you see that?”
exclaimed Derek. He rushed across Elena’s path and up to the
charred husk of the grotesque spider-thing, oblivious to the
smell.

“
What the shit was that
thing?” demanded Kimberly from behind, rooted in place afraid to
move. Her hands balled into fists at either side.

“
They are Vürmm,” replied
Joaquin. He had left the remains of the other spider-bat and was
scurrying toward Hyun. He passed within a few feet of Kimberly,
stride-for-stride with Elena.

“
They’re what?” inquired
the girl, distrusted.

“
Vürmm,” answered Joaquin
over his shoulder. “Things that come from the other world Anthony
was trying to explain to you guys earlier.” He slowed his pace a
bit, shoulders perpendicular to Kimberly.

Her interest peeked. She
was no longer rooted in place and began to follow as they continued
toward Hyun.

“
It behaves for the most
part like a spider, though it spins no web of any sort. It pounces
upon its prey from above and carries them off, injecting
flesh-eating venom into the victim as it goes along. It’ll puncture
them over and over, until it reaches its’ roost. Then, it’ll devour
the liquefying flesh of its’ catch as it feels the
need.”

He stopped when he came
beside Hyun, his face changing. “It didn’t sting you, did it?” he
asked, a troubled look overtaking him.

“
N-no, I don’t think so.
How would I know?” responded the injured teen as she lay on her
side, unmoving.

Joaquin froze for a
moment.

Ah, the creepy Gift-thing
again
, recognized Elena.

He said: “You would feel a
terrible burning sensation throughout your body. The puncture wound
would seem like it was on fire, and then -. Well, nothing, within a
few minutes the entire area would feel numb,” he answered when he
was able focus his mind.

Hyun breathed in deep
draughts for a few seconds. “No, I don’t feel any of
that.”

“
Good! Can you sit up?”
Elena heard Joaquin ask as he squatted down next to Hyun, holding
out his left hand for her to grasp. His right hand rested on her
arm just below the shoulder, ready to assist if she chose to rise
from the ground.

Hyun had rolled over from
her side and was now lying flat on her back, looking up at the ever
darkening sky, her face veiled in obvious pain. “I think I can, but
it still hurts to move,” clarified the girl. Her hands were at her
sides, her eyes not moving much as she frowned through the
discomfort wracking her body.

“
Ok, just take your time.
Let us know when you’re ready,” consoled Joaquin, clasping his
hands before him. He did not stand.

“
God damn, where in the
hell did that lightning come from?” wondered Derek, standing behind
them all in awe as he struck the burnt mound of flesh again and
again with the toe of his boot.

Ah, Derek, don’t do
that!

There were a few nervous
giggles from their original group.

“
You’re not gonna believe
it,” chimed Louis. He came up beside Derek, his fleshy jowls still
made red with fear, though it seemed ebb with each passing moment.
His nose wrinkled with loathing.

“
Believe what?” queried
Derek, swinging around to face the chubby boy.

“
Later,” said Anthony with
mild authority, but loud enough to silence the chatter. “Hyun, you
just take your time, ok.”

“
Yeah, no sense in rushing
you if all it’s going to do is cause you more pain. It could lead
to more damage,” added Jason, standing next to his crouching
friend, glancing over at Anthony and Elena. He raised his eyebrows
and took an expansive breath, looking straight at her. “You guys
will come to find that Elena can do a lot more than call lightning
from the sky.” He gazed at Anthony, his eyebrows bobbing up and
down.

She blushed.

Joaquin applied a degree
of explanation from his lowered stance. “The Illuminai can call
many forms of light, and mold them to her will upon demand.” He
paused to look into her eyes. “Elena, I bet there are things you
can do that none of us could even dream of. Just think about how
many different forms of light exist in the universe and the many
different ways you could manipulate them. The possibilities are
countless. After what we saw in the cave and out here today, your
Gift could be... well, limitless.”

Elena could see it was his
Gift that telling him this. The truth of it rang in her gut, but
still…

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 something about it. Do you understand, Kim? Are
you listening?”