He made his way through the jumbled, unevenness of the floor toward the tarnished glow. Every few steps, he stumbled or tripped where the surface of the ground was either too slippery or where he had merely tripped over some unseen obstacle. More often than not, he felt the snapping or cracking of the timeless formations and grimaced at his clumsiness. Although it happened time after time, each time he looked back at the assumed damage, he would find the stony deposits as pristine and unchanged just as nature had formed them.
At last, he made it to the center of the cavern and discovered the source of the greenish glow. It was a shallow pool of water about ten feet in diameter, looking like glass it was so smooth. He could see straight down to the very bottom of it, which to him appeared to be no more than five or six feet deep.
It lies within, he thought as the knowledge flowed into his mind one more. This is where I must bring Anthony. This is where the key will unlock the unknown power of the Reborn Kring-Hël - The Final Iteration.
Here lies the Legacy of Truth.
He blinked his eyes, emerging from the depths of his mind. He felt himself, once more, in another cave the one housing his companions. All of them were still asleep.
From the pit of despair he emerged. No longer did it grip him as tightly as it had a short time ago. Joaquin felt the spreading warmth of determination begin to permeate his limbs, course through his body. For the first time since his rending from the world he had loved, he knew exactly what to do, and precisely how to do it.
He hadn’t needed the Teachers after all. His Gift had shown him the way.
A few minutes later, he was asleep, dreaming. Joaquin Barrientos had finally found rest within the Melded World.
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~ 59 ~
An Unwelcomed Visitor
Day Two, Friday, 6:41 am…
She stood at the intersection of three small trails, atop a shallow rise. She glanced about, at the destruction left behind by the brief battle she learned had raged between the children, their unbeknownst Familiars and the forces of the Storm – her allies. Ordered to investigate their sudden disappearance, she had searched high and low, quick and fast, using all of the ability to track flesh until she’d come to this place. The entire time, she had wondered how these children had been capable enough to escape the clutches of the Vülfen Crown Prince, Lord Fenris. She shook her head at the miraculous nature of that accomplishment, for it was a feat never before witnessed - even dreamed, in the World of Storm. No one ever escaped Fenris and his highly trained Host, ever, and yet - she frowned with the sour thought - somehow these pampered, prattling little brats had managed to do just that!
Nonetheless, she wasn’t here to contemplate their escape or their subsequent vanishing. No, she was there to do what she had always done. She was to track. She was to seek and to find. And, she was to bring back to the Hand the quarry he had lost. For this, she would be given her meal of twisted and tortured flesh to stave off the insanity threatening to boil over inside her. It was the curse of her forged race. She would fall victim to madness should she not eat the proper food in a timely fashion. Already, she could feel the writhing in her gut and the slight ache at her temples. They were the first telltale symptoms she would need to feed soon or face incapacitation, or worse.
She would have to move fast.
With great effort, she pushed the bothersome aspects of her physiology aside and tried, with herculean mental focus, to concentrate on the task at hand.
All about her were the strewn remnants of what must’ve been a fierce battle indeed. There were Swüreg bodies, parts of Swüreg bodies, even piles of tiny, pulverized pieces of pieces of Swüreg bodies all about. There was even what looked like a good portion of one such unfortunate creature smashed high up in the boughs of a tree - foreign to her in nature – more than four cable-lengths above her head. She could make out the long sinewy entrails of the warrior dangling from the tree’s spindly, thorn-like leaves. She could see the bits and chunks of what looked like an arm, only it was twisted so horribly delicious it made her mouth water. It was the only distinguishable part of the Swüreg left.
Inside, her stomach ached, and she began to smack her lips at the sight of so much tortured flesh. She almost forgot her mission and had to literally force herself to stay put and not jump headlong into a ravenous frenzy of consumption she was wont to delve from time to time. Maybe if she slowly picked her way through the carnage and partook of an occasion sweetie of ghoulish meat, maybe she could hold back the urges. Maybe, this time, she would be capable of fighting the compulsion to shed her clothing and rub the mangled parts about her tiny ones…
Maybe… but only just, she would have to be careful, meticulous.
She smoothed out her short, white dress. As was acceptable, it ended an inch above her knee. Fastidious as always, she adjusted the bright blue ribbon about her waist and its matching partner holding her severely blonde hair in place. It was more out of habit than out of need. Very seldom did she ever look disheveled; it was part of her allure, her beguiling ability to portray, at all times, the tiny, demure ideal of an innocent girl. This was how she reeled in her victims. This is how she got them close, within reach of her incredible strength, her retractable teeth and razor sharp claws - though none of that was currently evidenced.
Unfortunately, it was also what slaked the lust of her shriveled, decrepit master, Vallüm, for it is well known all Prēosts desire the bodies of the young. The torture and rape of the young is the very source from which they derived their ungodly power. Otherwise, they would lose their ability to mold and bend flesh, bone and sinew into whatever shape or form they require. The services shared between her and her master were a vicious cycle of depravity of both mind and body. She was typically on the losing end of it…
Above her and off to the left, stood Jätung. He was her mighty Isighünd, sniffing at the ground, pawing every once and a while when something needed further dissection. The great bulk of his body was never entirely concealed behind any of the low-lying plant life, shrubbery and scrub brush. He was merely too large to be completely hidden.
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.
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~ 60 ~
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.
After he’d emerged from his waking dream, he had fallen, surprisingly enough, into a nice restful stretch of sleep, deep and without dreams. He had awakened nearly forty minutes ago and immediately announced to his newfound friends, he had a plan.
The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves Page 52