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

by Richard M. Heredia

  “Lynn, please, be one hundred percent honest with me. I need to know. Did she sneak out? Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “Sneak out? Why would she sneak out?” Lynn was even more muddled than before.

  “Does she have a boyfriend I don’t know about? Is she sneaking about with someone new? Did she spend the night with a boy?”

  A boy! Lynn’s thoughts were raging. Did she just ask me if Vanessa had snuck out of their house so she could have sex with her boyfriend? She doesn’t even have one! What the hell is going on?

  “Mrs. Menendez,” she stopped her throat constricting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understanding your questions. Ness doesn’t have a boyfriend, especially one she’d want to… uh, you know.”

  “Please, Sweetie. I won’t be mad. At this point, it would be a huge relief. I just need to know where she is. I need to know that she’s ok.”

  Vanessa sleeping with a boy would be a relief! What the heck?

  “But that’s just it. There’s nothing to tell. Our plans were to sleep, wake-up early and go to the police station. There was no boyfriend or anything like that,” explained the girl. Her voice strained, hoping Vanessa’s mother was listening.

  “There was no party or kickback, or whatever, going on last night?” Holly was sounding more and more panic-stricken with each passing second.

  “No.”

  “There was no rendezvous of any sort last night?” She was near to tears.

  “No. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We went to bed, so we could get up -.”

  Vanessa’s mother cut her short. “Wait a second. Why were you guys going to the police department in the first place?”

  “To check on our friend, to see if anyone reported her missing, so we could provide our statements. You know, to see if we could help find her,” she replied at once, having nothing to hide.

  “Why would the two of you think she was missing?

  “Because neither of us have heard from her since Friday.”

  “Oh my god, are you talking about Juanita? Are you telling me she’s missing too?”

  “Too? What do you mean by that?”

  “Honey, that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you. When I got up this morning, Vanessa wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t in her bedroom. She isn’t anywhere in the house. My husband and I don’t know where she is. That’s why I am calling you, hoping you could provide a shred of information, so we can find her.”

  Lynn sat on the bed, immobile, her jaw hanging open as if it had become unhinged.

  “I found her cell and found your number. That’s how I was able to get ahold of you.”

  Vanessa gone?

  “Are you sure you don’t know where she is?”

  J.J. gone?

  “Honey, are you still there?”

  Lynn did not know what to do, how pull air into her lungs, how to tell her mind that it was time to respond to Vanessa’s mother.

  “Lynn, can you hear me? Are you still on the line?”

  “Y-ye-yeah.” It was like she was speaking from beneath a comforter.

  Quiet sobs bubbling from Mrs. Menendez shadowed an awkward pause.

  “You don’t know where she is?” It was a question, but not worded like one. It was more rhetorical than anything else.

  “No, I don’t know…”

  “Ok dear, sorry I bothered you,” she mumbled.

  “No. No. It’s ok -,” began Lynn before she realized the woman had already hung up. She flopped backward onto her bed, her hands at either side. She was about to let go of her phone when it sang suddenly, with a ringtone that was quite familiar.

  She sat up as though a bolt of lightning had struck her feet. Her fingers moving so fast across the glass of her cell, it took her three tries before she was able to answer.

  “J.J.! Oh my god, you bitch, you had me scared out of my mind!” she accused, much too harsh.

  But the voice on the other end was not that of her party-hardy friend.

  “Lynn! Lynn! This isn’t Juanita. It’s me, Joyce!”

  Joyce? Why the hell would J.J.’s mom be calling me from J.J.’s phone?

  “By the way you answered, I take it you haven’t seen my daughter either…,” implored the woman.

  “No,” she said. She was meek now. Inside, something died.

  Why did it feel like the devil himself was venting his wrath upon her?

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  ~ 48 ~

  Playmates

  Day Five, Monday, 7:59 am…

  She was lying down upon the frigid rock within the cave. She did not need to be standing upright to know she had grown yet again. She knew for a fact she was more than a foot and a half taller. When she had first entered the Melded World with Jätung and the boy, Andrew Ibarra, her vantage was different. That had been only five days in the past.

  Her limbs were longer, almost stringy. They had sinuous muscles and ligaments pulled so taut they felt like they were going to snap at any moment. Her neck felt awkward as well. It was much too long and thin to hold up her ever-growing head. Her hands and feet had grown as well. Her fingers and toes were inches longer than before. Her nails were hardening, sharpening, more and more with every passing hour.

  There were other alterations as well. Features she had seen on every other mature, female creature, but never upon herself. They were aspects of a growing being, the first inklings that marked femininity. Already, there were twin swells of flesh upon her chest. They grew beneath enlarging, sensitive nipples. Her hips were beginning to flare. Her backside had started to round as her waist became more pronounced. With each gut-wrenching bout of pain, lessons of agony transformed her into an ever more bizarre creature. And she had come to this fledgling plane a strange being to begin with.

  Now, she was becoming something not even she could comprehend.

  Despite the rapid, if not excruciating, changes in her appearance, none of them made her feel uncoordinated or weak in any way. What she felt inside was quite the exact opposite. She felt stronger, quicker and more solid than she had ever felt throughout her six and a half centuries of life. She was growing. For some unexplainable reason, she was growing in more ways than she could count. Her body was changing, her physiology was altering and her mind was being reshaped as well.

  No, that was not the correct manner in which to describe her mental mutation.

  It was expanding.

  No, it was flowering!

  So much so, it was hard to grasp the full reaches of the matter inside her head. As with the rapidity of her physical metamorphosis, her mental capacity was transforming too. But this was swifter and with such diversity, all she could do was sit back and let it happen.

  When she was able, she took stock of what she was becoming. When the pain subsided, giving her the chance to test out her new form, her new abilities.

  This last episode of pain and agony had begun mere moments after she had ordered Jätung to go outside the cave and see if the way was passable.

  He had done so many times to no avail.

  No sooner than she had given that non-verbal command had the breaking and melting of her flesh had begun. She had bent double under the strain of it.

  The Isighünd, having no desire whatsoever to be near her, had bolted out of the protection of the cave into the elements. There had been no a second look back.

  Having experienced pain on so many levels in the past, she had steeled herself against the onslaught. She had endured Vallüm’s perverse tastes over the course of many years.

  Then her bones began to break of their own accord, her body began to stretch and contort as it had many times in the past few days.

  In the end, she had relented to it and screamed. She had wailed and cried until her throat was raw and bleeding. Still, she could not stop, for the misery had not ceased, the rending and reshaping of her body went on. She felt herself altering in places she had long forgotten. Private, personal pla
ces she had only experienced on a child-like level, but this was more. It was never on the scale she was experiencing now. Something… odd was occurring within the confines of her person. It was something she could not quite put a finger on, but it was definitely something new.

  I am becoming a woman…, she had thought to herself as she writhed and twisted upon the ground. No more am I a helpless little creature, forced to receive the attentions of the vile and the cruel. They suck power from me. They succor into themselves the vitality and strength that is mine by right.

  I am Inghëldir.

  No longer will I be anyone’s toy.

  She had not known where the thoughts had come from. Anguish filled her to overflowing. She had thought herself incapable of conscious thought. Yet, somewhere deep down was a part of her that remained calm and rational. It was a new part, a new fortified center that could separate itself from the pain and maintain a degree of control. Though she had no control over her body, she had a modicum of herself within this new central place. While she continued to curl and uncurl upon the half-frozen ground, writhing.

  It was where these notions of her reality emanated, seeped like smoke through cracks in solid granite. They found a way.

  I will refuse him. I will not let him take me as he has every day since he created me. I will not let him have me again.

  I will… fight.

  The thoughts came forth, bubbling from that middle place like water gurgling forth from the earth to create. It was a tiny stream, a trickle that would bring new life to everything around it. She knew, as time passed, from this new, hidden bastion within, a new person would grow as well.

  Thus, she had pulled the shredded remains of herself into this armored core and huddled within. She left her body to itself and the suffering. She had been helpless against the agony anyhow. There was little else she could have done. She had gathered all that was Inghëldir and began to mend what she could. She began to piece herself back together, one torn and mangled shred at a time. Given enough time, she had figured she might be able to remake herself whole once more. How she was to look and feel afterward was anyone’s guess.

  I will fight him. With everything I am, I will fight him. He will not use me again!

  She had watched, detached and aloof. It was as if she was another person altogether and not the deforming Nixy twisting this way and that upon the rocky floor of the cave. When her body had gone rigid with the strain of so much torment, she had almost lost control of her inner sanctuary.

  Instead, she regained her mastery and forged on. She had watched as her body bent back, her spine arching upon itself. Her head and neck pulled as well, a grotesque rictus upon her face. Her arms reached out as far and wide as they could go. Her heels smacked gruesomely upon the unyielding rock. The top of her head had scraped across the rough surface of the ground, leaving a wide trail of hair, skin and blood in its’ wake. She had heard her spine break with such force. The sound had reverberated throughout the small cave. She screamed. Even from within her protective mental fortress, the intensity of the torture was immense. All at once, her body had gone limp, as flaccid as a balloon punctured by a needle.

  She had gone still at last. The tremendous woe passed. She had felt her spine realign - lengthening, broadening, calcifying. From within the new-made reinforced core in her mind, she was aware she had grown again. Yes, she would be taller when she stood. When she was in fact capable of attaining her feet, she would tower.

  Now, a minute later, it had stopped – the pain, the unmaking and remaking of her body. She burst forth from that internal place she had hidden within. She let her consciousness refill her body, her new, more womanish form. She breathed in a great drought of icy air, feeling the oxygen nourish her blood.

  At once, she felt the strength, the raw power thrumming within her flesh. She could feel the tingling newness of places that had not existed moments before. The meat and skin about them burned in the frigid confines about her.

  She glanced down at herself. From her prone position on the floor, she saw what had once been her pristine white dress, did not cover her at all. It was now a tattered remnant, her ribbons were long lost to her changes and the weather. She could see bits and pieces of herself through the now sheer material half-cloaking her body. She could see the swell of her somewhat larger breasts, the ripples and ridges of her ribs on either side of her narrow torso. She marveled at her rock-solid abdominal muscles. Her midsection had grown long and flat. It leading down to her pubis, matured beyond her wildest imagination. For it now sprouted the first dewy hairs she had ever seen down there.

  Her body had developed!

  She was no longer trapped in the body of an eight-year-old girl, no longer was she in the permanent stasis. She was no longer just a Nixy. She was something more now. She was something beautiful and frightening at the same time.

  The thought made her smile with a mouth that was larger and wider than it had been a few minutes ago.

  I am Inghëldir.

  I am onto myself, of my own accord, free of bondage and abuse.

  I am Inghëldir.

  She breathed again…

  …And let loose her mind.

  Almost at once, she was aware her consciousness had grown by leaps and bounds when compared to what had happened to her body. She could feel everything, touch everything and see everything in her mind. She felt the wind, the cold, the snow, the leaves, the bushes, the trees and the earth of the Melded World - all. In an instant, she could taste it, smell it and know it for what it was as if all about her was in exact tune with her mind. She could feel the wind, she could taste the air and she could touch the bark of the trees. She could run her mind over the frozen branches of the underbrush, pick up the icy froth of the ground and run it through the ghost-like fingers of her brain.

  It was incredible!

  She was so much more than a mere tracker now, capable of such destruction, able to move in ways she had only dreamed of before. She commanded mental ability that could outstrip any idiot Prēost who might attempt to cross her path. She could do so with ease.

  She was Inghëldir!

  She was no longer a Nixy. She was so much more than that now.

  That was when she felt him. He was running fast, as only he could run. His strides, with each unimaginable flex of his muscles, were more than thirty-feet in length.

  It was Jätung. He was running for the cave with blinding speed.

  Why, my old friend? she asked, letting her mind reach out to him. It was automatic that she followed the usual paths and threads leading to the nexus of his mind. She repeated the question as she did so. She sent the familiar, calming tendrils of herself to him, the question riding upon their heels.

  Jätung, what has happened?

  To her utter shock, her mind did not connect with his as it should have. Her question was not conveyed as it should have been. Even with her expanded consciousness, he was completely dead to her. He was void, as if she did not exist to him. For the first time in two hundred years, she knew without a doubt – Jätung was no longer her pet.

  Something else was driving him.

  He was coming to kill her.

  She told herself to stand. But, she was already doing so by the time the thought had completely flashed across her consciousness. She was unaware her body had responded. She stood there; much taller than she had been minutes before, with her legs well apart. Her left foot she placed a bit before her right, balanced upon the balls of both her bare feet, poised. Her fingers she spread as wide as they could go. She felt a new tingling sensation at the tips of each of them.

  Gazing down, amazed, her nails now extended beyond the ends of her fingers by more than two inches. She had only a second to glance at them. There were barbs, shaped and strengthened like fishing hooks. She knew, if she sunk them into flesh, they would not pull forth without leaving grievous wounds behind. She stood there, panting, waiting for her rebellious Petling. Her child-like dress was no more than a sund
ered remnant of what it once was, not solid enough to cover her nakedness beneath. Much of her matured features it exposed to the cold air about her.

  She cared little that her womanhood was plain to see. There was only one thing on her mind at the moment - the most feared Isighünd in all Storm. He was bearing down on her, keen upon ripping her limb from limb.

  She was facing the entrance to the cave, her eyes penetrating far through the murk and muddiness of the blizzard. Already, she could see his light-gray form approaching at speed.

  She could not help but remember, in the heat of the moment, pulling him from the clutches of his mother. Her ample litter had been before her. He was the biggest of the bunch, the strongest produced out of an already strong line. He had been responsive and keen to her mind from almost the first second she reached out to him and stroked his infantile brain. He had been pliant and willing. He was the perfect addition to the Nixy that had outlived all others, the Nixy who had earned the right to own a Petling of her own.

  Every chance she was away from the diabolical charms of Vallüm, she had spent with the baby Isighünd. Aptly, she had named, Jätung - meaning “He of Me” in the Old Tongue. She had nurtured him, fed him. And she trained him to the best of her ability. Until one day, he had become the fixture beside her, a forever companion that went wherever she went, no questions asked.

  They had been through so many harrowing adventures together, Inghëldir had long lost count. The narrow escapes, the last minute rescues and the near death experiences were so many it was beyond her ability to recall them all. He had been her fiercest protector, her most loyal servant.

  Oftimes, he had been the only other being she shared her innermost thoughts, though he understood her only half the time. He had listened, nonetheless. Every time she had opened her mind to him and shared what had hurt or poured out what was bothersome, he had listened. With soft grunts and long drawn out growls, he had lent her his mental ear and she had spoken into it, time and time again.