The Magnificent 12: The Call

The first book in the Magnificent 12 series introduces David "Mack" MacAvoy, a twelve-year-old living in Sedona, Arizona, who has an extraordinary number of phobias, including claustrophobia, thalassophobia (fear of oceans), and selachophobia (fear of sharks). Despite his fears, Mack is average in every visible way. His distinguishing trait is an exceptional habit of noticing details about people and surroundings, which he uses in his hobby of provoking bullies and then outrunning them.

At Richard Gere Middle School, bullies are organized into a hierarchy, each claiming a different student group. When Mack interferes with two bullies tormenting a classmate, he provokes a chase that ends with him cornered by Stefan Marr, the king of all bullies, a fifteen-year-old seventh grader who is big, fast, and fearless. Stefan drags Mack behind the gym for a beating, but when Stefan swings and misses, he puts his fist through a glass door, opening a deep gash that bleeds profusely. The other bullies flee, but Mack stays, applies pressure, fashions a tourniquet, and calls 911. Stefan nearly dies from blood loss. Mack walks home covered in blood, but his parents, who long ago gave up trying to understand their phobia-riddled son, do not notice.

Interspersed with Mack's story are flashback chapters set thousands of years in the past, following a boy named Grimluk. Twelve-year-old Grimluk lives with his wife Gelidberry, their unnamed baby, and two cows in a primitive village. When news arrives that the Pale Queen is approaching, Grimluk joins the mass exodus. While fleeing through a forest, he discovers a supernaturally beautiful girl addressed as "Princess" by Skirrit, monstrous insect creatures resembling giant upright grasshoppers. The princess transforms into a hideous beast and devours one of the Skirrit. Grimluk flees in terror.

When Stefan returns to school, the student body anticipates a violent confrontation. Instead, a very old man in a black robe materializes between them, possessing strange blue eyes that seem to cover the entire eyeball. The ancient figure cries out words in an unknown language, freezing all students in a harsh light except Mack and Stefan. He speaks another phrase that causes Stefan to choke, but relents when Mack protests, then vanishes. Stefan, recognizing that Mack has now saved his life twice, publicly declares Mack is "under my wing" (35), protecting him from all other bullies.

That evening, Mack finds a being in his room that looks nearly identical to him but is made of mud. The creature identifies itself as a golem, a supernatural being of clay created by "great Grimluk" to replace Mack while he is away. It tells Mack he is "going everywhere" (56). The next morning, an old man dressed entirely in green plants a dozen venomous Australian brown snakes in Mack's house, intending to kill him; the snakes have no effect on the golem's clay body.

At school, Grimluk appears as a face in the chrome pipe above a urinal. He identifies himself as one of the original Magnifica, ancient heroes who imprisoned the Pale Queen within the earth. The imprisonment was intended to last forever, but "forever" turned out to be only three thousand years, the largest number the ancients could conceive (86). Grimluk warns that the Pale Queen's release is imminent and instructs Mack to assemble a new Magnificent Twelve and learn Vargran, the magical language of power. Immediately afterward, the man in green enters and identifies himself as Paddy "Nine Iron" Trout of the Nafia, the Pale Queen's worldly allies. He draws a sword from his walking stick, but Stefan disarms him easily. Nine Iron warns that Grimluk has placed "the queen's mark" (93) on Mack, meaning all who serve the Pale Queen will hunt him. Mack decides he cannot go home without endangering his family and declares he will save the world. Stefan insists on coming along.

A limousine waits outside the school. Inside, a woman named Rose Everlast, an accountant, provides fake passports, a credit card, and plane tickets funded by a dwindling Swiss bank account. Their first destination is Australia, where Mack must find the second of the twelve.

In Grimluk's ancient timeline, he reaches a castle where an Army of Light is assembling to fight the Pale Queen. A one-eyed witch named Drupe tests him and confirms he possesses the "enlightened puissance," a mystical power, making him the twelfth and final member of the original Magnifica.

On the flight to Sydney, Princess Ereskigal, the same figure from Grimluk's past, attacks the plane in monstrous form before revealing herself as "Risky." She uses Vargran spells to control Mack's body, marching him toward the open cabin door. In the struggle, all three fall from the plane. Plummeting toward the ocean, Mack shouts Grimluk's Vargran phrase, "Ret click-ur!" (150), freezing time. He spots a sailboat below, restarts time, and he and Stefan survive the fall into the water.

The sailboat carries Jarrah Major, a girl who reveals she is the second of the Magnificent Twelve. Her mother, Karri Major, an Indigenous Australian archaeologist, discovered caves inside Uluru (Ayers Rock), a massive sacred rock formation in the Outback. Inside, Karri found a polished wall covered in Vargran inscriptions that function as prophecy spanning ten thousand years. The wall's coordinates predicted exactly where Mack would fall from the sky.

At Uluru, Tong Elves, child-sized creatures with goat legs and bowling-pin clubs, overwhelm the group and lower them into the cave. Inside, a vast wall displays what Risky later identifies as the Twelve Pairs of Potentiality: paired domains of power such as light and dark, fire and ice, and dreams and nightmares. The wall ends abruptly at a rock collapse that could represent physical damage or the end of history itself.

In the ancient flashbacks, Grimluk leads the Magnifica into battle against the Pale Queen. Four of the twelve die, but the remaining eight imprison the Queen in the World Beneath. Grimluk learns his wife and baby were killed. Drupe explains that the Pale Queen cannot die while her daughter Ereskigal lives, because the queen's power would transfer to Ereskigal upon death; Ereskigal must die twelve separate deaths before she is truly destroyed. After the battle, the surviving Magnifica spend years hunting Ereskigal, their numbers dwindling until only Grimluk and a companion named Miladew remain. Ereskigal kills Miladew in Australia. Grief-stricken and alone, Grimluk accepts the role of eternal sentinel, retreating to a lightless cave where ancient forces slow his aging.

Back at Uluru, Risky tunnels into the cave with massive diamond-tipped hands and destroys portions of the prophetic wall. The group flees into the desert, where Risky summons a supernatural sandstorm. Karri is knocked unconscious when their vehicle crashes. In a climactic moment, Mack wraps his arms around Risky and shouts an improvised Vargran spell, "E-ma edras!" (233), transforming himself into a being of blinding light. Risky bursts into flames, dissolves into black smoke, and vanishes, suffering one of her twelve possible deaths.

In the aftermath, Karri is hospitalized. Jarrah refuses to stay behind, insisting on continuing the quest. The group boards a flight to Shanghai to search for the third member of the twelve. Throughout the book, the golem left behind to impersonate Mack sends diary entries chronicling disastrous attempts to pass as human, providing comic relief while underscoring the problems Mack's absence creates at home.