Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  And they belonged to him. He could feel them, like extensions of himself. It was like standing in a field and sensing every blade of grass, yet none at all at the same time. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation. He knew it well. When he had been beautiful, and the King of Blood, he had been a creature made of light. He could split himself into a hundred thousand copies if he wished. Each one individual, and yet each one part of the whole.

  But that power, like his command over the chains that had once answered his call, had been taken away. And what it had been replaced with was…corpses, it seemed.

  Lots and lots of corpses.

  Shitty deal.

  I liked my chains.

  He walked down the line of bodies and examined each one. A few had mangled ink on their faces, ripped apart and rendered useless by hungry teeth or digging nails. But most of them bore no ink at all. And their stages of decay belied that they had been shambling creatures far too long to have been Rxa’s fault.

  What is going on?

  A new moon…a new king…

  A new Ancient?

  He shook his head and immediately regretted it. He stuck out an arm to grab one of the zombies beside him to stop his fall. The corpse didn’t respond. They were all just standing there waiting.

  A new Ancient is impossible. But so is all of this. “None of that explains why you folks are here.” He didn’t expect an answer. But he had a tongue now, and he was going to use it, dagnabbit.

  All of this should be impossible by the rules of their world. But it seemed like the rules had been recently thrown out the proverbial window by the Ancients.

  Rxa pointed at the bodies and started to count. “One, two, three…” He lost track. “One, two…” He smacked the heel of his hand into his temple, trying to shake his brain back into place. Or out of place. Or whatever was wrong with it, he wanted it to stop. “Never mind. There are a lot of you.”

  Wait.

  “I have an army.” He cackled. “How quaint!” He wondered if he had an army before. Or if he was his own, one-man, hundred-thousand-part army.

  Rxa struggled to remember anything that happened to him after Aon killed him and before he crawled out of the Pool of the Ancients as a monster. A bloody, starving, poisonous monster. He looked down at his hands. Bony and bleeding that blackish-yellow goop as his body processed the red meat and blood he had consumed and turned it into the thick, terrible substance that seemed to fill his body.

  He walked away from his corpses to stand before the giant statue of the multi-armed Ancient at the head of the cathedral. He had spent his entire life praying to it. But now, he didn’t speak words of reverence. Now, he made demands. “What am I? What did you do to me?”

  Silence.

  “Just once, y’know, it’d be nice if you fucking said something!”

  Screaming at the top of his lungs at an empty building didn’t help anything. But it felt nice. No, that was a lie. It felt like itching and burning. He still was missing part of one of his lungs. But it was still a little cathartic.

  There is no afterlife, is there? We just turn into…nothing. Nothing but bits of matter and memories that they can play with like children’s building blocks. They put me back together and filled in the parts they lost with whatever they could fit.

  He was shaking. He realized after a long moment that he was also weeping. Pulling his shattered mask from his face, he wiped at his cheeks with one of the stained bandages on his arm. Ember had tried so hard to wrap his wounds. Sweet girl.

  Putting his mask back on his face, he wandered around the sanctuary of the place he had once loved and adored. He knew every nook, every cranny. Every painting held a memory. Every piece of furniture he remembered polishing with care.

  He didn’t care for the puddles of blood he stepped in. They were cold and gloopy, but…he was gloopy.

  He needed a bath. But it was fair to say it didn’t matter when he was still covered in more wounds than he was flesh and missing more of himself than he suspected he had. He strolled through the center of the sanctuary, letting his fingers trace over the rows of pews as he went. Finally, he stopped and looked up at the shattered stained-glass window. He knew how it felt.

  “I thought I was beautiful. I once believed Under was a shining jewel. That we were a masterpiece of beauty, and horror, and life. That you were wise in your cruelty. That it all served a purpose…that it was all part of a plan. I thought I was loved.”

  He walked to a lit candelabra, the dozens of tapers burning bright. The little flames had stood witness to the tragedy and horror around them. To the deaths of those Rxa had pulled apart. He grinned under his mask.

  “I don’t know how I can destroy you, Ancients of old. But know that I will find a way. I will not stop until I do. But in the meanwhile, I think I will kill every single thing you care for.” Rxa grinned under his mask.

  He shoved the candelabra, toppling it over into a tapestry that ran up the wall. He watched as the fibers smoldered, charred, and then caught fire. It spread quickly up the tapestry, climbing higher and higher.

  Soon, the building would blaze.

  Good.

  He whistled as he walked back toward the exit. Kind of. He didn’t really have lips yet.

  He paused as he noticed a new statue that he hadn’t seen before. It was a twisted, rotted, hideous creature. Its skin was peeling away from the bone, as if it had been dead long before it ceased to move. It was the statue of an Ancient, but not one he recognized.

  At its base was an altar, matching those of the other statues in the alcoves throughout the sanctuary. One for each of the seven houses.

  And now, an eighth.

  “Oh. Hello.” He walked up to the disgusting statue. “I suppose you’re the one I should be thanking for my new life.” Every Ancient required a royal. And it had chosen him.

  His mind wandered to Ember. The pretty young woman with the strange hair who had been terrified of him but had looked upon his wretched pain with compassion. With pity. “What do you want from me, Ancient in Yellow?”

  The statue merely stared down at him. Empty eye sockets revealing nothing. Toothy, skull-like grin giving nothing away. Nothing except the joy of death. Of destruction.

  “Don’t think you’ll escape my wrath, newcomer.” He sneered. “You will die with the rest. But you will all die…after the rest of this forsaken world.”

  He knew where to start. He knew who to kill first. It made tactical sense. Attack the most dangerous opponent while their guard might still be lowered. Storm them while they might still be unprepared.

  But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that it was the person he really, really, reaaaaaaaally wanted to kill first. Slowly. And then kill again. And eat his heart. And then let him heal. And then eat his heart again. And then make him watch as he tore Lydia’s marks from her face and ate her flesh as she screamed for mercy.

  For pity.

  For compassion.

  He strolled out of the building, still whistling, although it was hard to hear over the crackle of the blaze around him. Once he was out on the front steps, he turned to watch the fire. “I’ll make you watch as I murder all that you love. I’ll make you watch as I dismember this lie you’ve made, limb by limb. I’ll make you weep as I tear apart your favorite son.” I should have been your favorite. I should have been the one you loved.

  Lies. All of it. I never mattered.

  “Correction…I’ll make you weep as I tear apart your only son.”

  He walked up to one of the rotted corpses next to him and slung his arm on the man’s shoulder, casually leaning on him as if they were the best of friends. As far as he was concerned, they were. He plucked idly at some of the skin hanging from the man’s ribcage. It tore off in chunks. The dead man didn’t seem like he minded.

  “But Aon will be very hard to kill. And he’s already sent me to the grave once.” He paused again. “I’ll need a bigger army to take him on. But I think I know where to get it. Yej has a lo
t of people, doesn’t it?” He sighed, quite contentedly thinking out loud.

  It wasn’t really talking to himself, per se—since there were people there.

  They just weren’t people-people.

  “I think I’ll name you Fred.” He smiled under his mask at the corpse next to him. “Hello, Fred. You’ll be my new best friend. We’re going to have a lot of fun. C’mon, Fred. Let me show you around! Welcome to Under.”

  He hummed to himself as he walked from the burning building. The whole of Yej would become his army. And then when he had thousands upon thousands marching behind him…he would go pay a visit to his very old, very dear friend, Aon.

  And he would tear the King of Shadows to pieces and eat his flesh.

  If he died a second time at the warlock’s hands, he supposed it was only poetic.

  If Rxa killed him instead, it would be justice.

  Rxa smiled underneath his mask. If he even really had a face. He wasn’t quite sure. It felt…squishy. Everything felt squishy, to be fair.

  Fear me, for I am Rxa, the King of Goop.

  He cackled at his silent joke, and for the first time in a very long time—he felt hope.

  No, never mind, that might be his liver growing back. He stuck his finger into his ribcage to find out. Yup. Just his liver.

  Oh, well.

  “Hey, Fred!” He smiled.

  Or didn’t.

  Whatever.

  “I have a liver again!”

  13

  It felt terrible to abandon Ember to what was likely a gruesome fate. But Lyon did not know what other choice he had.

  If the city were overrun, she would be doomed, regardless.

  He could only pray to the Ancients that he was not too late to save Yej.

  He exploded into a swarm of bats and took to the sky. It wasn’t hard to find the creatures that Rxa had set loose. All he had to do was follow the sounds of screaming. He dispatched as many as he could, ripping heads from shoulders.

  It was in one household that he found two of the creatures hunkered over a body of a man who looked as though he served in Vjo’s House of Words. But it was hard to say, since his face had already been ripped clean off. He was being devoured by two of the animated corpses.

  The two corpses stood to face him, snarling, blood dripping from whatever Rxa had left of their jaws during his carnage.

  The body of their victim on the ground lurched. The half-eaten man twitched. At first, Lyon thought it was simply the death throes of a body shutting down.

  Then it got up.

  And he deeply suspected that Under as he knew it was over.

  They ran.

  They ran as hard as they could.

  They made it halfway there before Ember watched Maverick stagger. She caught him before he collapsed. The man nearly ate the pavement at a full run. He was shaking. She knew he wasn’t that out of shape. Something else was to blame for his collapse.

  “No, no,” he wheezed. “No.”

  She had seen this before.

  “Ssh, ssh.” She helped him sit on the curb and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “You’re having a panic attack. That’s all. It’ll be okay.”

  “No. No, it won’t.” He put his head in his hands.

  It was then that she heard the screaming. Quiet and far away. But everywhere. Like nightmarish birds on a summer day, the sound of death and fear rang out through the city.

  The sound of a city dying.

  The sound of a city being consumed.

  Fear ran down her spine like cold water. “We need to keep going, Maverick. We can’t stop here.”

  The man nodded weakly. She pulled him up to his feet, and they resumed their way down the street toward the Great Hall. This time at a fast walk. He might collapse if they went much harder.

  Maybe they could get to Ini in time. Maybe she could protect them. Maybe they could defeat the army of drengil together.

  They rounded a corner.

  And once more…all her hopes were dashed.

  Ember’s stomach fell as if she had been dropped off a cliff. Maverick stopped and went rigid.

  Before them were not just a few drengil, swarming through a massive courtyard that must be the city center.

  There were not just a hundred.

  There must have been thousands.

  Maverick summed it up nicely for them in one simple word.

  “Shit.”

  The dead moved as one.

  It was amazing to Ember how that many people could move like a wave. How that number of drengil, all at once, almost looked like liquid.

  It wasn’t the first time she had seen it, although it wasn’t exactly common. Usually, people didn’t survive it once, let alone twice.

  The first time had been during her training as a child, when the tutors had taken all the young ones meant to become hunters and stood them on the lip of the wall of the citadel to look down at the horde at their gates.

  They were told to stare at the thousands of pawing, snarling, starving creatures that had amassed at their walls and tried, with never-ending resolve, to get inside. Clawing, scratching, moaning, crying out for flesh. For death. For them.

  Several of the young ones had cried and run away. They were not chosen to become hunters. But Ember had stood her ground. Even she couldn’t quite say why. She would like to believe it had been bravery, but the more she looked back on that memory, she realized it was really curiosity. Not about the drengil, but about the construction of the walls that held so many hungry creatures at bay.

  The second time she had witnessed something like this had been a few years later when that very same horde had broken through those walls.

  So many people had died that day.

  And now she could say she had seen a horde of drengil three times in her life.

  Whether she would live to see a fourth remained to be seen. Ember gripped her spear tightly and took a reflexive step back. The surge of hungry death was coming toward them, unstoppable as the wave it resembled.

  “What do we do?” Maverick asked, barely more than a whisper. “I am not equipped for this.”

  “We fight. We escape. We live. But right now? We run.”

  The horde was growing closer. They would be overrun in moments. Ember turned to Maverick, and together, the two of them ran. She let Maverick lead, even though he was a slower runner than she was.

  They had made it only a few blocks away when things went from bad…to worse.

  They came to a sudden halt in an intersection of two roads. She bumped into Maverick, who nearly toppled over. The path ahead of them was blocked by corpses coming at them.

  So was the exit to the right.

  So was the exit to the left.

  And so was their path behind them.

  Maverick sighed and loaded his gun. “Do you have any tricks up your sleeve, Ember?”

  “I’m not the immortal one with magical powers!”

  “My gifts are not designed for battle.” He lifted his gun and fired off a bullet into the head of one of the cadavers who had come too close. “Any ideas?”

  She was impressed at how calm he was, despite how screwed they clearly were. She turned around a few times, examining her surroundings.

  Live for every second.

  Running to the front door of the building, she tried the knob. Locked. Damn it!

  Maverick was still picking off the monsters as they drew closer. They were slow, but persistent. And killing a few of them wouldn’t stop the inevitable.

  Ember hurried back to the sidewalk and picked up a trashcan from the street. Without a second thought, she hurled it through the first-floor window, shattering the glass and sending it raining down to the street.

  “In and out the back.” Ember pointed at the window. “Go.”

  “You first.” Maverick used the sleeve of his coat to brush away some of the broken shards.

  “No. You. I’m used to fighting these things. You aren’t.”

  “E
mber, you’re mortal—”

  “This is my job! This is what I do. I won’t go first. The faster you get in there, the faster I can follow you.” She glared at him and made sure he knew there was no room for argument.

  With a beleaguered sigh, he hopped through the window, a little less than gracefully. “All right. Now give me your hand.” He reached out for her.

  She reached back.

  Something else grabbed her shoulder.

  She twisted out of its grasp and, taking her spear from her shoulder, stabbed the long, sharpened point through the skull of the drengil who had snatched her.

  It wasn’t alone. A second one took the place of the first. It shoved her, knocking her down. She hit the cobblestones and was lost for a second in a sea of legs and limbs. Snarling, she kicked at the corpse that leaned over her, sending it sprawling backward. It was enough to slow it down, but not enough to stop it.

  Maverick’s gun fired several times. “Ember!”

  “Go—run—get out of here!” She punched at the figures over her. She felt the scrape of teeth on her calf, and she kicked violently. She felt something crunch underneath her boot.

  “Ember!” More gunfire.

  “Go!” She screamed for him to leave her, even as she thrashed and fought. It looked hopeless. There was no escape. The city was overrun.

  No. Live for every second.

  There—an opening! She scrambled across the cobblestones, pushing through the limbs toward the parting in the crowd of bodies. Maverick was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t mad at him for abandoning her. Honestly, she was glad she didn’t see him. It meant he had survived just a little longer. Going in after her was suicide.

  Trapped on the other side of the pack of corpses from the house Maverick had escaped into, she scrambled for options. There, in the shadows, where she hadn’t noticed it before—a tiny alley between two of the buildings!

  She ran down it without pausing. By the sound of things, the creatures were following her, but she knew from experience that they were slower than she was. Although they could continue to animate through a great deal of grievous wounds and injuries, it often left them unable to move as fast as the living. It was the few advantages the living had over the dead.