The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves by Richard Heredia

They were made entirely of shining black nylon
with red eyelets and black nylon shoestrings.
    “ What do you want?” asked
Anthony, obviously annoyed, once he’d noticed Elena was staring at
him from the corner of his eye. He wasn’t willing to give her his
undivided attention, because he had more important things upon
which to waste his time.
    “ I was just thinking,”
replied the girl.
    “ Well, think with your
stare somewhere else.”
    “ How can you think with
your eyes, dork?” she uttered indignantly, jutting her chin
forward, stressing her point.
    “ Whatever, Ellie, I’m busy
here, so go mooncalf in the other room,” was his answer as his
fingers continued to play across the keyboard of his
laptop.
    “ You’re not even supposed
to be playing video games before doing your homework, anyway. I’m
gonna tell, Dad,” challenged Elena, already making to get up, to do
what she’d threatened.
    Anthony breathed a huge
sign of resignation, because pulling his eyes from the screen was
such a great sacrifice. “Look, I called a quick clan meeting right
now, because we’re gonna have to figure out a strategy when we
attack that Raid Boss later on tonight. You remember, right, the
one I was telling you about?”
    She nodded.
    “ You
know, if we don’t have a good plan, he’ll morph again and kick the
living crap out of us. We’ll have nothing to show for it, except
being massacred by that stronger version of himself that no one
has ever killed.”
    Elena quickly sat down,
very interested, her threat forgotten.
    “ You do remember the last
time?” he asked.
    “ Are you talking about the
time that huge guy with the real big horns turned into that
demon-wolf-man thing that killed your party in like three hits?”
chuckled Elena, recalling how angry Anthony had been over losing
the battle so quickly. It should’ve taken well over an hour to
complete.
    Anthony nodded his head,
shaking it slightly from side to side. “Yeah that’s the time. I
lost my +6 earring in the process. The freaking thing cost me like
12.5 million bones to craft,” explained the boy. “That sure pissed
me off.” He face wrinkled ruefully at the memory.
    “ So what are you going to
do this time?” she asked, genuinely interested in the massively
online game Anthony played religiously. It was a game most of the
males – and one female - in her family played year after year -
Lineage II.
    Anthony smiled and leaned
closer toward his sister. “This time were gonna Zerg that fool,” he
whispered conspiratorially.
    To Elena, it was as if the
monster within the game could overhear what they were saying about
its eminent demise. Maybe it could make plans to counter the
pending onslaught? This, despite the fact that he - the monster -
was merely a sequence of code on a server somewhere in Korea. Or,
maybe it was Texas. Elena couldn’t remember which.
    “ Zerg?” she bleated,
having never heard a word like that before. “What the heck does
that mean?”
    “ It’s game-speak. It
describes a horde of four parties, each with eight players, working
as a unit. Together, it’s called, a Zerg. Everyone bombs on a
single monster, or mob of monsters, with a common goal in mind. In
this case, it means our entire clan and a few of our allies are
banding together to kill that Horny-headed bastard,” informed
Anthony, as he resume his online chat with the other clan members.
“If it works out as it should, then we should get some mad
drops.”
    “ Does he drop only weapon
enchants when he dies or does he drop other things?” inquired
Elena, wanting to show her brother that she did indeed know some
things about the game.
    “ According to some of the forums out there, he’ll drop just
about any high-level item in the game, so the whole Zerg should
benefit from it,” he answered. He quickly typed in a few more
messages, smiling down at the screen of his laptop. “We could make
a very decent profit, if all goes well. The extra cash will