Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  She was keeping her options open.

  “Queen Ini means well. She is one of the most benign amongst us. Indeed, between her and King Lyon, there are no kinder souls in Under.” Maverick spoke with the cadence of someone used to giving lectures. She tried not to hold it against him. “You are safe with them.”

  “I left a dying world of poison and rot…and have fallen into one of magic and monsters.” She glanced at him. “I’m skeptical.”

  “You misunderstand. I said you were safe with them, not safe in general.” He crossed one leg atop the other, resting his ankle on his knee. “You are right to be concerned. Mortals in this world are exceedingly rare. And brief.”

  “Thank you for not sugar-coating it.” She turned her attention back to Lyon and Ini. She shook her head. “I still can’t wrap my head around any of this.”

  “You are handling it better than most do when they come here, if it is any consolation. But by the looks of you, it seems you are accustomed to a life of unexpected hardships.”

  She looked down at herself, and then at Maverick. Her appearance and his couldn’t be farther apart. Her clothing was all salvaged, stitched-together, and designed for function over form. She was dirty. Her boots were a bit too big for her, but they were all she could find, so she wore them anyway. Her two-toned hair was probably a mess.

  He, meanwhile, looked perfectly untouched in his gray suit and slicked-back dark hair. There was tiredness in his visible gold-toned eye, but other than that…he looked pristine.

  “I guess,” she muttered, looking away. She hated being easy to read.

  “You said your world was one of poison and rot. What precisely did you mean?”

  “I—”

  A scream tore through the Great Hall.

  7

  The scream echoed off the stone walls.

  And then it was cut short.

  Ember was on her feet instantly, charging toward the sound. She heard footfalls behind her, and knew she wasn’t alone.

  It didn’t take long to find the source of the sound.

  In a hallway just off the main room…she had her proof that she did not come alone.

  Drengil.

  “What on—” Maverick said from behind her.

  There were six of them. Each looked as though it had been dead for some time. Their flesh was dried and flaking away. Or in some cases, it was worse—their bodies putrefying, leaving long smears of rancid liquid running down their tattered, stained, and ruined clothes.

  Bloody teeth grimaced through missing cheeks and lips, the soft tissue having been the first to be eaten away by their predecessors or taken away by time.

  Corpses. Moving, hungry corpses.

  And they had found a kill.

  The six drengil had descended upon their victim. A young woman in a blue dress, now turned purple and dark by the crimson that welled from her open wounds. The monsters were already ripping away at her, desperate and intent on sating the only thing they knew—hunger.

  They had no weapons. They didn’t care.

  It wasn’t until Ember had seen a drengil tear someone apart with their bare hands that she believed it was possible. That with just blunted teeth and nails that were more than often missing from bony fingers, a person could tear another apart.

  The woman was already dead. Six corpses had made quick work of her. One was already bent over her face, eagerly eating the tender parts there.

  “By the Ancients,” someone gasped. It might have been Ini.

  Ember didn’t turn to see. She rammed the end of her spear through the head of the corpse that was devouring the woman’s face. It fell to the side, twitched, and lay still. The other drengil didn’t look up or respond to the threat. They only had one goal—one purpose—and no care for their own well-being or those of their “compatriots.”

  A second one fell to her spear a moment later. Another blow through the skull. Bone shattered and fragmented. Dark liquid poured from the hole as she yanked the metal rod back out of its head.

  The third fell beside her, but not by her hand. Its head was ripped clean from the neck and discarded quickly from a golden and armored claw.

  Lyon.

  Armor—elegant and vicious at the same time—had appeared over both his arms. The fingers of each ended in long, pointed, talon-like blades. Blood dripped from the digits of his right hand. He reached down and picked up another one of the drengil by the skull. He crushed it easily.

  The sound of death had long since ceased to make her ill. Which was good. Because that was a pretty vile one.

  The fifth fell to her spear. The last again to Lyon.

  The puddles of blood, some darkened and coagulated and some fresh, looked out of place against the bluish-white marble. Lyon’s armor vanished, shimmering and disappearing as if it had never been there.

  Magic. Real magic. It was just one more impossibility to put on the list of what she had seen in the past few hours. It was hard to be impressed with Ini floating a few feet away, a hand pressed to the painted lips of her full mask.

  Maverick knelt near the victim’s head. He turned her face from one side to the other and sighed. “Her marks were destroyed.”

  Ini wailed and flew into Lyon’s arms. The tall, pale man comforted her, looking for all the world like one of the statues that lined the walls.

  “That means she can’t come back like the rest of you can?” Ember asked Maverick quietly.

  The man in gray nodded solemnly. “She is truly dead.”

  Ember sighed. She knelt next to the woman’s body, careful to avoid the puddle of blood. She placed her hand to her heart in salute to the dead. “Megir thu taka thetti gomlu guthaenum ieth vild theirra.”

  “What did you say?” Lyon asked.

  “May you join the old gods in your rest.” She stood from the ground and pulled a cloth from her belt to wipe the gore from her metal spear. “My gods are not here, nor are they yours... It’s a foolish thing to say. But it’s an old tradition.”

  “It is appreciated all the same.” Lyon smiled at her gently. “These are the drengil of your world?”

  Ember nodded.

  “Fantastic.” Maverick stood from the ground and pulled a square of cloth from his breast pocket and began to clean his hands. “So, your new friend has not come alone, I see?”

  “And that is not all that has come with her,” Lyon explained. “There is…a new altar in the sanctuary of the cathedral.”

  Silence.

  Maverick just stared.

  Ini was the first to respond. She reached up a hand and placed it on his cheek. “By the Ancients…you are not lying. An eighth altar? How—but how?” She sounded afraid.

  “I do not know.” Lyon took Ini’s hand and clasped it in a way that was meant to be comforting.

  She’s a queen—an ancient, powerful creature—and she’s afraid? Ember chewed her lip and took a step back from the pile of bodies. There was a crowd forming. A dozen or so people stood nearby, whispering to each other nervously.

  “I wish to see this new altar,” Maverick folded his square of fabric meticulously and tucked it back into his suit pocket. He paused. “Wait. If there is an additional altar, that means there must be an additional royal.”

  “I suppose so,” Lyon answered. “Unless the position remains vacant, and therefore the void has returned.”

  Maverick grunted and rubbed his fingers over the part of his forehead that was unobscured by his mask. “Fantastic,” he repeated. “Another royal. Another headache to deal with.”

  “I take exception to that.” The pale blood-drinker smirked.

  “I am sure you do.” The scientist fought a smile and lost. “That is the point.”

  Ah. They banter. I get it. There was an odd comfort in seeing friendships between the strangers into whose presence she’d been dropped. It meant that they were more than the mindless corpses who lay crumpled at their feet.

  But there was still one thing she had to do. “Before…um.”
Ember sighed. “I’m sorry to say this. But we must either remove the head of the woman or put a hole through her brain. If we don’t, she’ll…rise as one of them.”

  “That isn’t possible, is it?” Ini floated back into the air, her hair swirling around her. “The Ancients wouldn’t allow such a corruption to take—”

  The dead woman sat up. She bared her teeth and hissed loudly. She reached her bloody, chewed-on hands toward them.

  Ini sighed. “Never mind.”

  Blam!

  Ember jumped several inches in the air, startled by the sudden noise. In the same moment, a jagged and bloody circle appeared in the woman’s head. She crumpled back to the floor.

  Maverick was to blame. A pistol was in his hand. The casing fell to the marble with a clatter. He waited a moment before tucking it back into a holster on the inside of his coat. “Pardon the noise.”

  Ember fought the urge to lecture Maverick about creating noise and wasting ammunition on a single drengil when a spear or a knife would be a far more effective method of dealing with it. But then she reminded herself that this was not Gioll.

  “I do hate that you carry that thing,” Ini whined. “It’s so terrible!”

  “Yes, yes. It goes against our culture. I understand. But since the events of the Rise, my queen, I find I no longer care.” Maverick sneered briefly. Something flashed over his face. Something like disgust, regret, and grief. And hate.

  But for what? Or whom?

  They are so very old. They must have so much personal history. Once more, she felt small and lost. She slung the strap of her spear back over her shoulder and grasped the strap with both hands, finding some small familiar comfort in the feel of the leather on her palms.

  “We should warn the others.” Lyon nudged one of the corpses with his shoe, turning it over. “Where are they? I expected to be the last to arrive here, since I walked with Ember. Taking her through the fold hardly seemed appropriate.”

  Ini shook her head. “There will be no traveling through the fold, I’m afraid. Or at least…it seems we no longer know how.”

  “What?” Lyon lowered his voice again. “That isn’t possible.”

  “The very first thing I tried to do when the Orrery fell was fetch Vjo and Evie from the north. But when I tried to pass through the fold…nothing happened.” Ini began to toy nervously with an elaborate necklace of sapphires and diamonds that hung around her neck. It shimmered in the light from the gas lamps on the walls.

  Lyon paused. He furrowed his brow. He held out his hand then and seemed to try to do something. But after a moment, he let his hand fall back to his side. “Damn.”

  “It seems you fools are forced to walk and ride about like the rest of us.” Maverick smirked. “Aon will be quite put out. However amusing as that is, I do not look forward to dealing with his foul mood. More foul, at any rate.”

  “What could cause this?” The blood-drinker paced toward a window, rubbing his hand over the lower portion of his face. “Has this ever occurred? The loss of the fold?”

  “No. Not in all the thousands of years. Not even when the void had nearly consumed us,” the Queen in Blue replied.

  “What’s the fold?” Ember asked Maverick quietly, afraid to interrupt Ini and Lyon’s discussion.

  “The royals of Under, by benefit of their close proximity in nature to the Ancients whom they represent, may pass through the fifth dimension to travel quickly from one location to another,” the man patiently explained.

  She stared blankly at him. “Fifth dimension?”

  “Ah. Think of it like this.” He took out his pocket watch and held the ends of the chain between the thumb and pointer finger of his two hands and pulled it taut.

  She resisted the urge to snatch the watch from him and marvel over it. She had never seen one working before! And certainly never so shiny. But Maverick was already launching into his explanation, and she was more than a little curious.

  “Think of yourself as a two-dimensional creature. A dot drawn onto a piece of paper. Yes?”

  Ember nodded.

  “Good. You are here, at the end of the chain in my left hand. You wish to walk to the end of the chain in my right hand. You could do so by following the straight line. By traveling along that two-dimensional line to the finish. Yes?”

  She nodded again.

  “That will take a great deal of time. But think of it this way. If you had the ability to do so—if you could, as a two-dimensional creature, temporarily pass through the third dimension…” He brought the ends of the chain together until they touched, creating a loop of the brass links beneath his hands.

  “You could—oh—oh—” Ember smiled. “Like folding a piece of paper.”

  “Precisely.” He smiled. If she wasn’t mistaken, there might have been a bit of surprise, and a tiny bit of pride in his visible eye. “And lo, the fold.”

  “They can pass through the—I can’t imagine that isn’t immensely disorienting.” Ember wrinkled her nose. “Or pleasant.”

  “They adjust. It is unsettling for the rest of us if we are unfortunate enough to be brought along as baggage.” Maverick grimaced. “Believe me. That Lyon brought you by foot is a testament to his bleeding heart.”

  “But now they can’t use ‘the fold?’ Or whatever?” Ember looked back to Ini and Lyon, who were talking in hushed tones by the window. Ini, even though she wore a full mask, was more than expressive enough by her body language. It was clear they were both deeply troubled.

  “Yes. This means the other royals are stranded wherever it is they were when Under fell. If we are in danger, it means we may be caught off guard.”

  “Great.” Ember scratched the back of her neck. “As if living through the end of one world wasn’t enough. I have to live through another.”

  “Hopefully, you will.” He began to tuck his pocket watch back into his vest but caught her staring at it. He held it out to her. “Would you like to see it?”

  “I—I mean—” She wiped her hands off on her pants, but it was useless. Her pants were about as dirty as the rest of her. She looked down at her palms. She hadn’t ever been ashamed of how she looked until right that moment.

  “It’s quite all right. I promise.”

  With a shy smile, she took the watch from his hand and turned it over in her palm. It was a beautiful piece of work. The back of it was etched with diamonds that gave it a wonderful texture. She held it up to her ear and couldn’t help but laugh at the sound of it ticking. “I’ve never seen one of these working.”

  “I would love to hear more of your world, Miss Ember. I would gladly trade you a tour of our grand library in exchange.” Maverick let out a small grunt. “If Lyon will part with you.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything left of my world.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just a theory…”

  “It may be the correct one. What do you think has happened, Miss Ember?”

  “My world was dying from the drengil. The corpses.” She gestured her head at the bodies on the ground. “They were brought on by the arrival of the creature we called the Dread God. We battled them for three generations. But we were losing. I think the eighth altar in Lyon’s church is that same creature. I think my world is…is gone. I think all that’s left of us is here, now. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.”

  Maverick hummed thoughtfully. The gears were clearly whirling away in his head. She left him to his thoughts and went back to the beautiful brass prize in her hands. A watch. A real, wonderful, working clock!

  She found the small clasp on the side of the pocket watched and pressed it. She ran her thumb over the glass, watching the little hands click along in a circle. It said it was half past six. It was still dark outside—so it must be winter in Under, and the sun…

  But she had been in Under for at least seven or eight hours now. She glanced up at the window. “Wait.”

  “Ah, you are a smart one.” Maverick smiled at her. “It
is six-thirty in the evening.”

  “In some of the northern regions of Gioll, when the sun set in the winter, it would never rise again until spring. Is Under like that?”

  That caught Lyon’s attention. He looked at her, sadness in his eyes, but didn’t reply. Maverick was the one who spoke after a pause. “In a matter. Under has no sun that rises. Our moons provide our light and give sustenance to our flora. If you ever do see the sun rise…” He hesitated. Something thick layered onto his voice. It was that strange hatred. “If the sun does rise…be afraid.”

  She swallowed. “Okay. I will.” She closed the pocket watch and went to hand it back to him.

  Maverick held up his hand to her. “Keep it.”

  “What?” She blinked, stunned. “No. You’re joking.”

  “I have dozens. People give them to me for every holiday, thinking I need another to add to my collection. Really, it is because they have no other clue what else to give me.” He smirked. “You are doing me a favor.”

  “It’s…thank you.” Ember looked down at the watch in her hands. “I have nothing to give you in return. And I have done nothing to earn it.”

  “Tell me more of Gioll when we have a moment, and consider the watch as advance payment.” He smiled at her again. This time, and for the first time, it had a shadow of warmth in it. But it faded a second later. He turned his attention to Ini and Lyon. “If you two are quite done mourning your ability to use the fold to rise above the rest of us plebs, I would like to see this new Ancient. This ‘Dread God’ from Gioll. Perhaps we’ll find our new royal along the way.” Maverick struck off toward the exit without another word.

  “I should stay here.” Ini floated over the gory mess of bodies and looked down at them, her shoulders falling in dismay. “She should be put to rest.”

  “Be wary of more of these creatures, Queen Ini,” Lyon urged. “There will be more.”